Bono Boutique Review

Anjali from Katalyst Reputation Management contacted me regarding an event. Her mail read as follows:

How about some Bacon & Chocolate, or why not Blue Cheese and Honey? Confused?

Well, I am talking about Cordon Bleu Chef Alyssa’s newest creation – Bono Boutique Ice creams!

Spearheaded by Chef Alyssa’s innovative streak and culinary mastery, Bono is the city’s best-kept secret. When she returned from London, she started experimenting with making small-batch ice cream for family and friends. Through her experimentation, she discovered that there are very many flavours that when put together bring out the best in each other.  From savoury staples to unique pairings, Chef Alyssa’s has handcrafted some of the most decadent masterpieces that quite literally melt in your mouth. Blue cheese to sea salt, cocoa to fresh fruits, Alyssa is slowly but surely rewritten the ice-cream making grammar.

As Alyssa says, “There are a few things that give people of all ages such instantaneous joy as a bowl of ice-cream. I realised early on that flavour revolutions really do start in small batches. My close community of regulars and the thrill of creating a truly original and delicious flavour inspires me.”

Keeping this in mind it is with great pleasure that I invite you to discover her hidden kitchen tucked away on Rebello Road in Bandra.

Do let me know a day and time you would like to immerse yourself in some unforgettable and totally original flavours of ice-cream!!

One thing I will promise is a memorable afternoon of creating flavours and crafting ice-cream.

Our Take: When we reached Bon Boutique, we expected a medium-sized or at least a small restaurant-type of ambience. However, the place is made up of just one room that functions as the kitchen. When asked about it, Alyssa told us that after the rains, she is planning to place a couple of tables with chairs outside the parlour, with the permission from the society of the building in which it is housed. Currently they have only takeaways and home deliveries. They outsource home deliveries to agencies.

Alyssa began with the demos of a couple of ice creams. The first one was Dark Chocolate and sea salt. I was fascinated with this flavour of ice cream because I wondered how the salt would taste in an ice cream. Ice creams for me are sweet-tasting food items. She mixed sea salt or rock salt with milk cream on an induction stove. After all the salt had dissolved, she mixed the salted cream with dark chocolate in another vessel. She explained that after the chocolate had thoroughly dissolved, the mixture would go into a churner machine and then the resulting churned liquid was frozen to make an ice cream variety.

The second demo was that of Mango and Passion Fruit variety. She told us that Mango would be too sweet and that sweetness is cut by the sourness of Passion Fruit. She began the demo by mixing Stevia with milk cream on the induction stove. Stevia is a 100 % natural sweetener, with zero carbs, zero calories and zero glucose. After the sweetener had got completely mixed with the cream, she added the strained pulp of mango and passion fruit to it. Further the procedure of the churning and freezing is the same as above.

Then came the tasting part – being vegetarians, we could taste only 6 of the 10 flavours because the other 4 contain egg. One scoop each of the 6 varieties was placed in front of us. We tasted Mango-Passion Fruit, Pondicherry Vanilla (the vanilla beans come from Pondicherry), Hazel nut (which oddly tasted somewhat like peanuts), Salted Caramel, White Chocolate-Passion Fruit and Dark Chocolate-Sea Salt. We found the salted varieties interesting, while we loved Dark Chocolate-Sea Salt, Hazel Nut and Pondicherry Vanilla the most.

Her future plans include creating new flavours every month.

Price: All 500ml tubs for Rs. 600, except sugar free which is Rs. 700 and truffle Rs. 900.