My first encounter with Dessert Corner was at an Indian food truck park in Clayton. Just off the Princes Highway, an empty lot is ringed by vans serving street food – omelettes, dosas, sandwiches and pilafs.
The only place to sit down is a scrappy side area, which is fine, it’s what you expect from food trucks, but I couldn’t help but feel the creativity and care evident in Dessert Corner’s extravagant sweets, sundaes and cassatas deserved a better showcase.
Evidently, owner Deval Patel thought so too, because she’s just opened a smart sit-down restaurant where she can put her food on proper plates rather than compostable trays, her faloodas in sundae glasses, not plastic cups, and her brownies on cast-iron sizzling platters.
Fast-growing Truganina, 20 kilometres west of the city, is a great spot for the enterprise. The suburb is a subcontinental hub with many businesses finding a home at Sapphire Square, a new commercial park. In among the nut shops, curry houses and mechanics, this two-level fast-casual diner makes an easy event of eating out.
Actually, it’s not that easy, because the menu is 19 pages long and choosing is challenging.
Highlights include the creamy, smooth pistachio cheesecake, which, like everything here, is egg-free, gelatine-free and uses natural ingredients.
Patel’s tres leches cake takes a Latin American milk-soaked sponge and gives it a fusion spin: the rasmalai flavour incorporates sweet cottage cheese and cardamom into a blissfully moist creation.
Falooda is a milky drink with rose syrup, vermicelli and soaked basil seeds, but it goes a bit wild here. The Glory Falooda incorporates four ice-cream flavours, jellies, chocolate sauce and nuts in a colourful cacophony.
Cassata is popular in India: the Dessert Corner versions of this layered ice-cream cake are flavourful, fruity and pretty.
There’s savoury stuff, too. The Bollywood sandwich is what happens when a club sandwich goes to Mumbai: sliced white is layered with masala-spiced potato, fresh cucumber and coriander chutney.
The Tikki Tikki Bang Bang is a potato patty street snack turned into a burger and dressed with two key chutneys: coriander and tamarind. It’s a winner.
Deval Patel came to Australia in 2009 as a software developer and soon missed desserts that suited her palate and her Hindu dietary requirements: no gelatine, no eggs. During the pandemic, she started pottering away at home and built up a solid following.
The next Dessert Corner Lounge will be in Cranbourne, with plans for northern and city outlets in the future. Fabulous falooda at all points of the compass sounds like a foodie win to me.