Gelato Messina Dessert Bar, Darlinghurst - 26 Sept 2014

Gelato Messina have just opened the Dessert Bar in the space which once housed the Creative Department. The Dessert Bar is essentially a DIY / "choose your own adventure" sundae bar, where you get to have a bit of fun and build your own sundae by choosing as many toppings as you want with your soft serve. 

My wife and I arrived at the Dessert Bar at 5:30pm for some pre-dinner sundaes. Dessert before dinner may seem odd to some but we were able to beat the queues by coming this early (or maybe the crowds have all migrated to Cow and Moon now following their win at the Gelato World Tour). In any case, you will only ever see us at The Cross in broad daylight.       

The menu board

Building your own sundae may be only a 3-step process, but one is bombarded with choice when you enter the Dessert Bar.  Here's how you create your own sundae:

Step 1 choose your base: cup, cone (plain waffle or raspberry waffle) or carb (crepe, choux puff or doughnut). 
Step 2 choose your soft serve gelato: currently burnt vanilla, fanta sorbet or a swirl of both. 
Step 3 choose your toppings: currently includes hot fudges, choc top dip, foams, jellies, gels, creamies, bits and bobs and crunchy bits. 

There's a total of 23 different toppings at the moment and you can choose as many as you like for 80c each. My maths is probably a bit off, but that's 113,246,208 possible creations (please don't check :P)! The gelato flavours and the toppings will change every one or two months to keep us coming back for more.

All those toppings!

Donuts, choux puffs!

Popcorn!

Suggested sundaes for the less creative / decisive

Or you can scrap what I've written above and choose one of the suggestive sundaes that have already been tried and tested by the Messina kitchen. In typical Messina fashion, all the sundaes have funny, punny names including trailer trash brunch, carni candi, pavlova-kona, honey I burnt the kids, choux-co late dreams, the nutty professor, I dough know and cup of life. After much indecisiveness (even from a menu of just 8), we decided to try Honey I Burnt the Kids and Carni Candy.    

Choc top time!

Carni Candy ($9.90)

I just couldn't resist editing some eyes in hehe :P

Check out the massive afro on the carni candy! The nostalgic carni candy evoked memories of some of my childhood favourite sweets like choc top, redskin, fanta, strawberries & cream, and fairy floss! 

The fairy floss was voluminous and cute, but not very practical to eat, so I had to take off its wig before I could bite into the carni candy. I found its helmet, I mean chocolate coating, to be a bit thick. The fanta sorbet was nice and tasted like fanta (duh!). Having the fanta and chocolate together was like a mouthful of jaffas.     

The best part of this sundae was definitely the redskin custard, which was piped inside of the waffle cone. I absolutely loved redskins growing up and the redskin custard had all the familiar raspberry flavour that I came to love as a kid. And the best thing with this redskin is that it doesn't get stuck to your teeth! Inside the waffle cone were also some strawberry and cream jellies.   

Inside the carni candy, kind of like a jaffa cone!

Honey I burnt the kids ($9.90)

The other sundae that we ordered was honey I burnt the kids, which consisted of burnt vanilla gelato, burnt honey mousse, smoked butter popcorn, and smoked chocolate fudge served in a cup. The flavour combinations in "honey I burnt the kids" were more conventional and we both preferred this sundae. There might sound like there are a lot of smoked / burnt things in here but the smokiness is not overpowering and works quite nicely. The burnt vanilla gelato had a smooth, creamy texture, like how all good soft serves should be. I would happily order this sundae again.

While I still think a cup of gelato from next door is more satisfying, the Dessert Bar offers something fun and different and is definitely worth checking out. Plus who wouldn't want redskin custard or fairy floss with their gelato?  

Gelato Messina Dessert Bar

Address: 243 Victoria St, Darlinghurst NSW 2010
Contact no: (02) 8354 1223
Website: http://www.gelatomessina.com/messina-dessert-bar/