The night before I attended this dinner, I had a dream. I dreamt of a dimsum tree. Pearly white, translucent beauties hung from the branches, stuffed with the most delicious meat and seafood of every kind. I woke up satiated and with a smile on my face, looking forward to my meal that night. 

JW Marriott Mumbai hosted me and a bunch of other food bloggers to celebrate dimsums as a part of a week long festival held at their in-house Asian restaurant – Spices. Chef Tenzin from Arunachal Pradesh, a maestro at dimsum making is sharing his passion and creations with diners as a part of the restaurant team. Dimsums/ momos feature in my top 5 favourite foods of all times, and that’s one difficult list to get onto! This post is going to be a long winding tribute to one of the many imports from China that we can’t do without – the dimsum.

Celebrating the movie award season and the dimsum festival, I’ve put together ‘Dimsum Awards’ of my own. Hope it makes for a fun read. Here’s celebrating the best of the dimsums I ate at the J.W. Mariott dimsum week.

I remember the very first time I tasted a Magnum ice cream. A treat for all senses. My eyes widened at the thick chocolate coated ice cream bar. The distinctive ‘crack’ of the outer covering I heard when I bit into it. And the smooth vanilla inside that created such an offset of textures to the crunchy chocolate coating. You may have eaten a lot of ‘Chocobars’ in your life, but the first time you eat a Magnum is truly an experience. 

This international brand came to the country roughly a year ago with three flavour variants – Classic, Almond, and my favourite the Chocolate Truffle. For a year they’ve established themselves as a fairly premium adult ice-cream brand, partially due to their price bracket, and partially due to the use of pure Belgian chocolate that makes it so elite. Cut to – a year later- they bring a fourth variant into the market which got me all excited. The Choco Cappuccino arrives!

No, this isn’t the MasterChef version of the Mystery Box I’m unveiling today. No, I didn’t have to cook a dish using a mish-mash of ingredients that don’t fit together. This Mystery Box is different. This Mystery Box comes laden with goodies of the sweet and savory kind. This Mystery Box is a lovely patisserie in Mumbai’s sugar capital, Bandra. Read on to know more.

This six month old patisserie and cafe, is helmed by co-partners Chef Shahzad Variava and marketing man Ajay Agarwal. If the former name rings a bell because you’ve seen him on the small screen during his stint as a MasterChef India season two contestant. That explains the name of the patisserie, doesn’t it? I spent a lovely evening at The Mystery Box among croissants, chocolates, and conversation with the chef.