Macarons in Sydney – MakMak and Mero Mero

I’m reading a book called Sweet Poison: Why Sugar is Making Us Fat. It’s about how over consumption of sugar is to blame for the obesity epidemic and a whole host of other health problems including heart disease and cancer. The specific culprit is fructose - one of the components of sucrose or common table sugar – because the body converts it into fatty acids but, unlike when you eat fat, has no inhibitor built in to tell you when you are full. The book was sent to me by my aunt who has cut sugar from her diet and swears it has changed her life. I have to admit I found it quite persuasive and I’m thinking about doing the same, or at least cutting back.

I certainly hadn’t given up sugar when I met up with my friends Jess and Andrew for lunch earlier this week. We went to the food court at the new Westfield Centre in Sydney – where the Centrepoint shopping centre used to be. I had a craving for sushi and it seemed like a good choice since I’m trying to eat a lot of protein to help keep my milk supply up for the twins. Jess had a burrito from Guzman y Gomez and Andrew had a salt beef sandwich from Eat, Deli Kitchen. I’m glad I took the healthy option for my main course because I followed it with six macarons throughout the afternoon. Talk about a sugar binge.

MakMak

Macarons were the whole reason we were in Westfield. After our outing to Baroque in the Rocks to try their macarons, Jess suggested we visit Via Del Corso in the Westfield food court to sample MakMak macarons. All in the name of research, you understand. Jess read about MakMak on the Jenius blog, which carries an interview with one of the founders.

MakMak don’t have a store front but instead sell direct through their website and through other retailers. The macarons are $25 per dozen plus a $10 delivery fee if you order online, but were a whopping $3.50 each at Via del Corso.

I had high hopes for MakMak but ended up disappointed. Sure, the macarons were perfectly made with the classic textured shell and little feet but I wasn’t terribly fussed by the flavours, and nor were my friends. (Having lived in London and made regular visits to Paris, we have high standard for our macarons, you see). There is a slightly different range on the MakMak website but Via del Corso had six flavours on offer the day we were there – pavlova, strawberry shortcake, raspberry and yogurt, salted caramel, peppermint (with a chocolate filling) and something called gianduja, which was chocolate and nuts.

I tried the gianduja, raspberry and yogurt and pavlova, while Jess and Andrew also tried the strawberry shortcake and peppermint. (No one in our party had the salted caramel, but I’m quite familiar with the flavour combination from ice cream in California and also Baroque macarons).

The gianduja and the pavlova flavours simply had too much going on for my taste. I’m not opposed to innovative flavours for macarons, but simplicity is key. To my mind, macarons need one or two concentrated flavours, not five or six. The gianduja combined rich chocolate ganache with some sort of liqueur and two or three different types of nuts. The pavlova tasted faintly of coconut and I found it almost unbearably sweet. I quite liked the raspberry and yogurt but it kind of won by default – it was nothing I would go back for. I’m told that MakMak change their flavours every month and I wonder if they are maybe trying a little too hard to come up with new combinations instead of keeping a core selection of flavours and just alternating a few specials.

Mero Mero

So that’s three macarons and it would have stopped there, except that I saw that the Mero Mero bakery also sold macarons and in the interest of fairness, I thought I should give them a go. They had a macaron tower on their counter and assorted flavours in the display case, for $3 per macaron. The sales guy said the Mero Mero kitchen was above Woolworths on George St and the chef had trained Adriano Zumbo. I asked him for a recommendation and he suggested I try watermelon, lavender and coconut.

I took him up on the watermelon and lavender but passed over coconut in favour of trying honey sesame. This time I got takeaway so I could eat them later. I intended to leave them for the next day but didn’t have the willpower to wait. Like the Sweet Poison book says, you can eat a lot of sugar without feeling full.

Unfortunately I was again disappointed. This time I quite enjoyed the flavours but had issues with the macarons themselves. They seemed bigger than usual and the shell was overly crunchy with an obvious separation between a crust and the rest of the biscuit.

For the best macarons in Sydney, so far Baroque is winning – though I’ve only tried one Adriano Zumbo flavour so that’s not a fair comparison yet. Jess is now suggesting a trip to Balmain to taste test more Zumbo macarons but I think I’ve sated my sweet tooth for now. Time to lay off the sugar for a while.

Disclosure: I make a small commission from any Amazon sales.

Related post: Macarons in Sydney – Adriano Zumbo and Baroque

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