The Marmalade Pantry

Walked around Ion Orchard after dinner on a weekday, looking for a place to have either drinks or desserts and was down to two choices – The Marmalade Pantry on the 3rd floor or jones the grocer on the 4th. 1st ate at the former years ago in Holland Village (it has since closed and in 2011, The Marmalade Group merged with Refinery Concepts to form TheBigIdea) and remembered the food was good though a tad expensive. Loved its simple white menu with black prints on a clipboard too but my last dining experience at this branch left an impression for the wrong reasons and I have not been back since. However, I was tempted enough by the Lemon Meringue Sponge Cake on its menu that I decided to give it another chance. Though the open-concept place was most of the time packed when I passed by, empty seats seemed to be beckoning my dining companions and I. So in we went and sat comfortably on cushioned bench seats and wooden chairs with backrest.

Instead of Sticky Date and Toffee Pudding or Caramelised Pear and Salted Caramel Bread Pudding that one of us have tried and liked, we decided to order something else to try. Other than the Lemon Meringue Sponge Cake, we also had an Elvis cupcake as the Hazel one had run out. The former, a fluffy sponge cake with meringue that stopped short of screaming "sweet" out loud, was well-balanced by an aftertaste of tart lemon. Could barely taste the banana in rich chocolate cupcake topped with peanut butter frosting, which was a tad salty so it was not too cloying even 'til the end. I could smell a faint aroma of roasted beans in my order of smooth Mocha, with neither the coffee nor chocolate overwhelming the other. A lovely experience unlike the previous time I had dinner there, probably because it does desserts and drinks better than main courses. Either that or it was my companions who make the difference, or maybe both.