Meet Fresh, George St, Sydney

I berate myself for being so obsessed with Meet Fresh.  I tell myself it’s just fancy grass jelly, tricked-up sweet tofu and ok, some over-the-top use of mango, crushed ice and ice cream.  But logic is always trumped by obsession (and I am obsessive).  Besides, isn’t ice cream, the most wonderful invention in the world, just sugar, milk and flavouring?  Noodlies, Sydney food blog sees much more depth in Meet Fresh desserts!

After any dinner in the CBD, and there’s been a few lately, my legs carry me in auto pilot mode to Meet Fresh.  Today, our posse wanders into their new store on 569 George Street, around the corner from the manic and original in Dixon Street mall.  The place is  busy, but thankfully the lines aren’t as long.

This Taiwanese dessert chain has been a run away success in Sydney and around the world.  For first timers, Meet Fresh can be daunting; long queues, frantic staff and a bewildering menu.  Dear noodlies readers, as a self-confessed addict, allow me to help… the menu can really be boiled down to three main base desserts:

• taro balls
• herbal jelly (grass jelly)
• sweet tofu

Grasp this and the delights of Meet Fresh start to unfold.  The rest of the menu is just the combination of the these base ingredients with added extras like glutinous balls and noodles, crushed ice, red beans, brown sugar, etc.

Above is a fine example (though half-eaten) of a taro ball dessert.  The taro balls are the round shapes at the forefront, it comes with sugar crushed ice (centre), noodles (forefront left), black glutinous balls (back right) and square-cut fig jelly (back left).  The joy of this dessert is the mixture of flavours and textures; the relatively plain taro balls, noodles, glutinous balls are enhanced by sweet crushed ice, gluggy balls playfully contrast with crunchy ice.

Apart from the above menu, there are some ‘specials’, made to be shared. Meet Fresh calls the dessert above supreme mango, noodlies thinks it’s more like a mango volcano.  It’s a mountain of crushed ice topped with mango, fig jelly, condensed milk all topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  It comes with side serving of evaporated milk, should you feel the need for extra creaminess!  Here, most of the ingredients are sweet ready to be balanced with crushed ice… just mind the cold white lava of condensed milk and ice cream!

Check out the featured noodlies video above for more.

Meet Fresh
351/569 George St, Sydney

Noodlies and friends gorged on Meet Fresh desserts as greedy guests of Meet Fresh.