Pastry: Nicely puffed with crunch 7.5/10
Presentation: Creatively iced, otherwise neatly assembled 7.5/10
Value for money: $4.50 - Medium sized portion, half decent 7/10
Overall score: 7.4/10
Selling at an average $4.50, I predictably took out one of their vanilla slices. With a 50/50 hunch that this may be stale I bravely picked the item up and tentatively took a bite. Greeting me with a noisy crunch the pastry was fresh and flaky...thank god! The pastry was in fact quite good; thinly layered, but crunchy and flaky when bitten. It allowed for seamless custard consumption, with little spillage to note. The custard, was mostly cream, with a hint of vanilla and some kind of additive powder. It was fresh, light and slightly better than average. The icing seemed to be a bit of an afterthought; heavy, grainy and loaded with thick lines of bog-standard chocolate. Sadly this left a somewhat cheap and distracting aftertaste in my mouth.
Athena should know (being all wise and inspiring) that the quality of ingredients is the most important thing when it comes to quality products such as the humble vanilla slice. I’m glad I stopped, but definitely room for improvement.