Darwin’s first dessert bar opens its doors

TOP End sweet tooths have a new haven with the opening of Darwin’s first dessert bar.

Asal's Cafe and Dessert Bar co-owners Arash Tayebbi and Justin Drennan inside their new store. Picture: Che Chorley

TOP End sweet tooths have a new haven with the opening of Darwin’s first dessert bar.

Asal’s Cafe and Dessert Bar, which opened in Palmerston’s Oasis Shopping Village last Friday, combines a dessert bar featuring made-on-site petit gateau, Movenpick ice cream, sundaes and thickshakes with a cafe menu offering breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Co-owners Justin Drennan, Arash Tayebbi and Graeson Cooper aren’t stopping there, with a bakery and chocolate factory also on the cards for October.

Mr Drennan, a pastry chef who has trained and worked at several major Melbourne eateries, said the bar was a place where people could “have ice cream at seven in the morning … or nine at night”.

He said he hoped the business would start a “dessert revolution” in Darwin.

“Dessert can be a really special thing. It can take someone on a journey, a journey of taste, in which they’ll try something in a certain flavour and it can remind them of a memory,” he said.

Some of the desserts on offer at Asal’s Cafe and Dessert Bar. Picture: Che Chorley

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People tend to abuse dessert, they don’t appreciate it … but dessert can be a meal.”

“I want to show people that the third course of a meal is as important as the first, that dessert is as important as the main.”