The Cake...

Dear Friends,

A few weeks ago, in order to celebrate our friend Xin Xin’s birthday, we organized a really nice dinner at Carlo Cracco’s venue in Milan with the old EHL crew. I already talked to you about Cracco and here are some picture of our great meal that included a very original caramelized Russian salad as a pre-starter, risotto con Nero di Sepia and Ricci di Mare and some white truffle dishes (sorry Stefania !).

Photo by Xin Xin Loh, 2010

But the highlight of the evening was Xin’s Birthday cake. Let me just tell you a bit more about it. 2 months ago, when we started organizing the diner, we all got an email from our beloved friend in Hong Kong asking for a special cake. Well, although you don’t really order your special surprise birthday cake normally (that’s why it is called a surprise), Florian and I were so amazed by the email that we decided to go on with it.

Photo by Xin Xin Loh, 2010

You see, most people will ask for a special flavor, or even a special image on it or a weird colored topping. But Xin, on the other hand, asked us for an “Elephant shaped Sachertorte chocolate cake with a pink frosting and green dots, ideally from Pasticeria Cova but if it is from St-Ambroeus it’s ok”.  I worked for 6 months in a Palace hotel in Paris and believe me, I had my share of original requests. But this was just so out of the blue! Since I love challenges, especially when it comes down to my concierge skills, I decided to team up with Florian to find a way to produce the cake. So here we were, two courageous knights, on a crusade for the perfect cake in the streets of Milan. We decided to first to choose St-Ambroeus over Cova because we thought the first one to be more specialized in cake “Extravaganza”. You should have seen the face of the poor girl behind the counter when we explained to her that the cake was supposed to be in 3D, and not in the usual 2D! She was so confused that she had to call the chef of the pastry. When we thought about the crazy requests that this guy probably had to fulfill over the last decades, we directly knew we were talking to the right person. After listening to our explanation for about 10 minutes (in a mix of German, French and Italian), he just asked to things: “is it ok if I do green hair instead of green dots? It will be nicer” and “Guys, just tell me it is not for tomorrow!”.

Photo by Xin Xin Loh, 2010

Florian then dropped the package during a secret run to Cracco just hours before the diner without having actually seen how the cake was looking (which worried me a little but the package was incredibly tightly wrapped).

The hard part was to make Xin believe during the whole diner that we didn’t manage to find the special cake (I think she believed us…but on the other hand, she maybe played us, knowing our record of crazy request fulfillment). When it finally arrived on the table, we were all completely stunned with it! It was a super cute pink elephant with like a huge overweight!

Photo by Xin Xin Loh, 2010

Happy Birthday again Xin!

Photo by Victoria Grueninger, 2010

From rainy Milano with love,

Mr.Nico

Sant Ambroeus Milano

C.so Matteotti, 7 - 20121 Milan

Ph. (+39) 02 76000540

Fax (+39) 02 76005447

www.santambroeusmilano.it

Ristorante Cracco

Via Victor Hugo 4, Milano

+39 02 87 67 74

info@ristorantecracco.it

www.ristorantecracco.it