I heard a rumor that Hugo & Victor, a dessert shop that’s all the rage in France these days, was coming to Korea around Valentine’s Day as a promotion at The Shilla, so I decided to go and see for myself.
They were selling individual desserts at The Shilla’s Pastry Boutique, serving them as after-meal desserts at The Parkview, and offering a tasting course and an afternoon tea set at The Library. Even allowing for the (10%+10%), the overall prices aren’t all that steep for top-tier desserts flown in from France, though it’s true that splurging on everything at once does add up. And with an event as huge as Valentine’s Day in play, I think that kind of price is fine if you visit hand in hand with your partner on a special day.
The wine from the tasting course
I ordered the combava (apparently a kind of lemon) tasting course, which runs about 60,000 won, and they served a wine with pronounced acidity to match it. Not a bad choice at all, though someone with a sweet tooth like me will sometimes pair a sweet wine with dessert instead.
The wine glass
It went down nicely..
From the left: Victor Combava, Hugo Combava, combava chocolate
As I understand it, the Victor line is the classic desserts and the Hugo line the modern ones. The Victor Combava had its acidity beautifully in check, giving it an elegant sweetness. It was my favorite. The Hugo Combava was complex in its internal construction, and since I have a fair bit of experience with cakes in this style it felt a little less fresh to me — but it’s a style you rarely get to eat in Korea, so it’s worth trying for the experience. The chocolate wasn’t my kind of thing, so it was just okay.
Hugo & Victor use herbs aggressively in their desserts across the board, and maybe that’s why everything tasted so distinctive, unlike anything I’d had before. The designs were close to art, too. There’s clearly a good reason they’ve caught on in Paris.
Something that occurred to me after finishing everything: it might have been just as good to get the individual pieces to go and eat them at The Library. I should have skipped the wine and the chocolate and tried the caramel cake instead.
As I ate my way through all this I scouted the room, and ours was the only table that had ordered the Hugo & Victor desserts. How do you not order desserts this good? I can’t tell whether the promotion just didn’t reach people, or whether The Shilla is simply a place where only the regulars ever show up.
The black tea from the afternoon tea set we ordered next
They said the tea set came with an assortment of things, so I ordered one. My companion said the tea itself was less impressive than expected. (Compared with the Four Seasons, all the more so..)
The afternoon tea set
The bottom tier looks to be from The Shilla and the top two tiers from Hugo & Victor. What surprised me was how high the level of the food from The Shilla actually was. I’d never paid much attention to afternoon tea sets here in Korea, and I had no idea they were this good. The scone in particular — thanks to the clotted cream — left an impression.
From the back
The chocolate work was as beautiful as jewelry. The shell is thin and the inside is filled with cream and all sorts of other ingredients, so it felt less like a chocolate than a dessert in its own right. The soft marshmallows had herbs inside for a distinctive texture, and the macarons were the best-executed I’ve had in a long time. They had real chew and were packed with deep flavor — enough to make me think, so this is what an ideal macaron is. The financier was tenderly baked as well, and with a dessert called the Hugo Hallabong I scraped up every last bit of the cream at the bottom.
Clotted cream, strawberry jam
These come for spreading on the scones, and piling the clotted cream and the jam on together tasted so good it left me speechless. They sell the clotted cream at the Pastry Boutique, but it’s a bit pricey and I’d already picked up plenty of other things, so I didn’t bring any home this time.
After the visit I did a little digging, and apparently the shop name Hugo & Victor comes from the chef’s own name and that of the French literary giant Victor Hugo. It was more or less what I’d expected, but it still surprised me a little. Desserts and Les Misérables.. Anyway, it was a genuinely wonderful experience. If chances like this came around more often, life in Korea would be that much more fun. Here’s hoping the people in charge put on events like this often..