Lindt Chocolat Cafe, George St, Sydney

Lindt Chocolat Cafe, George St, Sydney
Tuesday 18 September, 2007

Did you know the average Australian consumes about 6.2 kg's of chocolate per year? Today my lunch buddy & I over-indulged. We couldn't help ourselves and it's all Lindt's fault!

When Lindt opened its Cockle Bay cafe at the end of last year, Taste.com.au commented that, "Why the chocolate giant would choose to open two of these cafés in the same city is anyone's guess, but Sydneysiders certainly aren't complaining." Well, now there are three cafes in Sydney - what do they have to say about that??? It appears that Sydney-siders have embraced the Swiss chocolatier, Lindt & Sprungli, and will not let go.

It's certainly not doing me any favours....being a closet chocoholic citing Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory as one of my favourite films I'll be lucky to survive the year. However, after visiting the new George St Lindt cafe on Friday to see what it was like I was keen to return for lunch. I mean, what's not to like about a chocolate cafe? I had visions of enjoying a large slab of rich chocolate cake for lunch and...........well, it's actually not too far from the truth.

My lunch buddy & I arrived around 12.30pm today and were shown to a table by the window. The cafe was buzzing and about 75% of the tables were occupied. We looked over the menus to determine our strategy......chocolate only or savoury & chocolate? Choices, choices.

We decided to share a few items and ordered the following:

- 1 x Iced chocolate and 1 x hot chocolate (the iced chocolate almost bought on a chocolate cardiac arrest - it was incredibly rich, sweet and so deliciously good that I doubted I could have anything else)

- 1 x Club sandwich with smoked salmon, dill, house pickled cucumber with goat's curd on tramezzini (Italian white bread - prepared as High Tea English sandwiches with the crusts cut off - very delicate and tasty)

- 1 x Pistachio almond meringue and 1 x milk chocolate almond meringue (these meringues were soft-ish and the pistachio was prepared with pistachio colouring/ flavour and not real pistachios)

- 1 x Indulgence Cake (the name sums it up)

After we had read and re-read the menu I noticed that in small print at the bottom of the last page was the following statement, 'Please limit all business meetings to 30 minutes'. The sheer fact that Lindt needs to print this on their menus is staggering. What has been happening in their other Sydney cafes?

Our waiter was polite, very helpful and happy to send our cake back to the kitchen to be sliced in two. By the time we were ready to eat the cake we both realised we had gone over board. Oh well, it's not like we do that every day........

Lindt Chocolat Cafe, Cnr George & Grosvenor Sts, Sydney