Pastry: Beautifully golden and puffed appearance, not fresh 6/10
Presentation: Neatly packed, chocolate drizzled top 8.5/10
Value for money: $5.60 - Average portion size, very sweet but tasty overall 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.25/10
Back home (after numerous soapy hand washes), I stood the slice on a plate and was impressed by it’s overall appearance. A great colour and flaked layers of pastry, effort made to decorate the top in drizzled chocolate and dusted icing sugar and neatly encased in a trans acetate sheet.
The custard had a mottled effect to it, which in the past has led me to some wonderful fillings. This one was slightly dubious, as I was unable to make an informed conclusion of an ingredient within the mixture that caused a slightly gritty texture. I’m familiar with the Greek vanilla slice which uses semolina, but I wasn’t 100% sure if this was the case with this Italian interpretation. The custard itself was tasty; very sweet, slightly set but creamy and full of vanilla flavour.
The pastry had seen better days unfortunately; lacking that freshly baked crunch and flakiness, instead pliable and soggy underneath the custard. The ingredients and technique to bake such rich, buttery pastry with those highly defined layers showed a lot of promise and I’d be keen to taste another one if I knew for certain that it was freshly baked. The drizzled dark chocolate, though very minimal, actually provided a bitter aftertaste necessary to cut through the sweetness, so proved worthwhile.