Tag Archives: Emporio Leone

Emporio Leone amps up their macaron offering

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I got a tip off from someone that Emporio Leone in the V&A Waterfront got a new macaron* provider.  Last time I tried them was in July of last year (you can read about it over here) and I really wasn’t that impressed.  I gave their macarons a Miss K Kiss-o-Meter rating of only 

The problem was that they were very flat, hard & dry and the only yummy part was the filling which was beautifully creamy.  Also they only had 3 flavours at the time: lemon, pistachio & chocolate orange.

So news of a macaron revamp was quite exciting.  Firstly their range of macarons has grown quite a lot:

Aren’t they pretty?  Turns out they now make them in-house.

They also look much better, not the pancakey types they had before.  It’s like they’re all puffed out and proud now. ;)

I wasn’t blown away by the “standard” flavours like the chocolate orange & pistachio.  But their strenght for me was definitely in their more exotic flavours.  Like the chocolate coconut, OMG!  And the Madagascan vanilla bean… and Dulce de leche… mmmmm.

My new rating for the Emporio Leone macarons is: 

So if you’re in the V&A, do give them a try.  Thank you to Louise van der Hoven who left this awesome little tip on my blog a few weeks back.  This was a great find. :) They come close to my favourite Cassis babies.

xxx

* If you were like, wait, isn’t it called a macaroon and not a macaron?  Turns out no.  I battled with it for a while.  But this article here should clear it up.  A lot of people refer to them as macaroons.  But technically it’s not correct.  I still say “macaroon”, cause macaron sounds funny.  I’m not gonna get all weird about it.  We all know what we’re actually referring to.  Just put it in your mouth and enjoy…

The macaron war revival

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Right, so I’ve sampled macarons from a couple of places in Cape Town now and Cassis keeps coming out tops.  Mmmmm.  ♥

But people have been insisting that I still needed to try one more place -  Daniela’s – shop 040, The Square, Cape Quarter.  I figured ah what the hell, I better give it a bash to see if I can finally put this epic battle to rest. ;)

Daniela’s is quite a pretty little shop with lots of decadent treats to choose from (dieters BEWARE!).  The cakes especially looked really really good…

I had to be strong… I was there for the macaroons… nothing more!  This was serious.

They had 7 macaroon flavours on offer, including a very unique champagne flavour  (actually, I had heard quite a lot of hype about that one).  I decided to try all of them except the peanut butter flavour.  I love peanut butter on its own, but for some reason a peanut butter flavour in anything else is just seems seriously wrong… blegh.

Anyways, these babies come at quite a hefty price – R10 each!  Yes, that’s right.  For only 6 I had to fork out R60!!  Ouch.

At least the beautiful packaging somewhat softens the blow:

Almost looks too good to eat… I said almost… hehe

My favourite one was the coconut (pale green) – it was soooo yum!   The champagne flavour (beige)  was a disappointment because to me it just tasted like plain ol’ caramel.  The chocolate was boring.  And the other ones, although great in texture  (slightly crispy outer, soft centre, creamy filling), you couldn’t really tell what the flavour was!  I’m assuming the yellow one was some kind of citrus flavour and the two pink ones were supposed to be some kind of berry variant.  But they all tasted the bloody same.  I mean, that’s the whole fun about macaroons!  Trying different flavours! This did not make me happy at all… :(

Now before I give you my Miss K Kiss-o-Meter score – just to recap, here are my ratings for my other macaroon finds so far:

  • Emporio Leone (V&A Waterfront): 
  • Myatt (V&A Waterfront): 
  • Cassis (Gardens & Newlands): 

So what about Daniela’s then?   I’m gonna have to give them: 

As I said, the texture was spot on and they get bonus points for that coconut flavoured gem, but the R10 price tag and lack of distinguishable flavours let them down in the end.

I’m definitely gonna stick to my darling Cassis – where for R60 I can go home with a full dozen! Oh yeah baby, now that’s what I’m talkin’ about…

xxx

Macaron wars & cupcake face off

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OK, so a while back I did a blog entry about these amazing macarons I bought at Cassis in the Gardens Shopping centre.  In that post, I claimed that they are by far, the best macarons in town…

But then, my friend Dani challenged me on that and said that I needed to also try the macarons at Emporio Leone in the V&A Waterfront.  So on Friday evening I ended up meeting up with Dani and another bestie, Joe,  for some dinner & a catch up.   After dinner, we needed something sweet, so we figured this was the perfect opportunity to go check out those macarons.

Emporio Leone is a relatively new spot and they specialise in all things sweet and evil.   Just look at the goodies on offer at this place:

Hold me back people…

And then there was this baby:

No, no! Get that away from me!

Oh and these:

Seriously!?! You are killing me here…

And finally, we found the little macaron beauties:

There they are!!!

The price is a bit steep at R8.50 each! (Cassis is only R5 a piece)  And they only had 3 flavours on offer:  Lemon, Pistachio & Chocolate orange.  A bit limiting…  Dani actually got me one of each flavour, cause she was so sure that they would blow me away.  Such a sweetheart! Mwah.   But sadly, they were quite hard and dry.  Maybe it was just a bad batch…  The only saving grace was the creamy filling.

I also got a deliciously evil-looking chocolate cupcake before exiting the shop… but more about that later. :)

After the disappointing macaron tasting at Emporio Leone… Joe, suggested that to make this a proper “best of” macaron review, we needed to head over to Myatt.  Myatt is a stunning coffee shop on the upper level at the V&A, on the Woolies side.

Can this place possibly be any prettier?

Their menu consists of sandwiches, wraps, salads and light meals, as well as an array of sweet treats.  One thing to note though is that these people take “attention to detail” to the next level, just look at the sugar cube bowl for example:

Sugar cubes just don’t taste the same unless they’re served in a golden cup!

And isn’t this the most beautiful cappuccino you’ve ever seen!?!

The cappuccino “hearts” me!

But on to the real reason we were there… the macarons!  The prices here weren’t too much better.  You can get 3 macaroons for R25.  But just look at their flavour selection:

BAM!!!

I went for the Vanilla (according to the waitress, that’s their top-selling one), the Pistachio and the Honey & Saffron.  The presentation again was top notch:

Oh so pretty…

However… the filling in these babies were seriously weird.  They had a strange margarine taste to them.  It was quite off-putting to be honest.  A total bummer though as the meringue parts were great…

So after getting to taste some of the supposed best macarons on offer in Cape Town, here are my final Miss K Kiss-o-Meter ratings to put an end to this war:

  • Emporio Leone: 
  • Myatt: 
  • Cassis: 

Cassis still wins by far!!! Woohoo!  Told you guys…

Now, back to that decadent chocolate cupcake I purchased at Emporio Leone.  Joe bought a vanilla cupcake at Myatt as well, so we decided to do a bit of a cupcake “face off” while we were at it.

In the left corner we had the Myatt Vanilla cupcake with chocolate shavings:

Contender nr 1

In the right corner we had the double choc, dressed up in gold dust cupcake from Emporio Leone:

Contender nr 2

While the Myatt cupcake won on looks 100%, the cake part was way too dense.  The Emporio Leone chocolate dream on the other hand was just yum!  But again, I have to give you my official Miss K Kiss-o-Meter ratings:

  • Myatt Vanilla cupcake:
  • Emporio Leone Chocolate cupcake: 

So there you go guys.  Hope you’re all craving sweet things just as much as I am now!  Gotta still try and work off all that sugar in the gym…  aargghh.  Does it count btw if you eat a cupcake while on the treadmill? haha.

xxx