At Marble Dessert Bar, a brand new dessert destination in Manhattan’s West Village, a pair of skilled pastry chefs are offering a creative prix-fixe menu of sweets in a stylish, relaxed setting. The couple, Mauro Pompili, an Argentinian with broad global experience at Michelin-starred restaurants, and Maya Sittisuntorn, who came from Thailand at 13 and became an industrial designer before switching to a culinary career, met while working at ChikaLicious, the venerable East Village dessert restaurant founded in 2003.
Mauro and Maya successfully launched a ChikaLicious expansion in China, where they spent two years before returning to New York in 2018. For their new venture, a 14-seat boutique on Bedford Street featuring a handsome curved marble counter, the duo’s complementary talents merge in the selection of simple, natural stone decor and visually stunning composed desserts.
Working together behind the counter, the chefs prepare a menu that includes an amuse bouche, a choice of one of five main desserts, a palate cleanser, and petits fours. There is an option to pair wines to complement each sweet. With a focus on fresh and seasonal flavors, the menu changes often, but there is always a twist – like banana cream and caramel in a toasted brown rice puff, lime agar agar and sorbet; or pineapple brulée and granita, green apple sorbet, mint, and lemon gel.
In addition to the dessert tasting menu, served from 4 to 10:30 PM, customers can stop by for coffee and pastries during the day from 8:30 AM to 4 PM. Mauro and Maya are also planning to enhance the ambiance by providing a lively collaborative space for their coterie of chef, artist, and designer friends to showcase their talents.
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