The Taiwanese have a range of great iced desserts using shaved ice topped with all sorts of sweet options and this is one of my main counters to a hot summer. Tianmu Blue Bird Cafe is a Taiwanese owned and operated chain that has several cafe's spread over Shenzhen (深圳) and Dongguan (东莞). You can tell you are near the place a mile off with the smell of freshly baked cakes and cookies leading you with siren-like calls and your nose instantly takes over control of the rest of your body and leads you on. Arriving at the front of the cafe, the first thing you will notice is the bakery offering a variety of tempting confections. But this is not what I am here for.
The first item ordered was a mixed fruit shaved ice pudding. A small mountain of shaved ice is first placed on a plate and then topped with an assortment of fruits. And then the entire concoction is liberally doused in a sweet sauce, making a beautifully coloured and appetizing visual spectacle.
Unfortunately, that was all pure appearances. Only good to look at. For what the dessert cost, one would expect Tianmu Blue Bird Cafe to be quite generous with essentially an extremely high profit item. How much can some sweet fruity sauce, a few pieces of sliced fruit, and some ice cost? Yet, stingy they were. The fruits barely covered the surface of the shaved ice and the sweet sauce was not even enough to penetrate more than a few millimetres of the surface of the ice, leaving the ice on the inside completely plain.
The black forest shaved ice pudding was even worse. The picture below says everything. All you get for this desert is an oreo and some chocolate flavouring which I may add, tastes worse than the chocolate ice cream stick you can purchase at the neighbourhood convenience store for 1 RMB!
Dessert clearly is not their strong suit. Service is another of their problems. The staff are excellent but the person running the cafe is not. Someone I know personally recounted to me later that their family was there several weeks earlier and trying to figure out what to order since everything they wanted was not available or out of stock and the rest that was offered was not what they wanted have. This Taiwanese manager came along and ordered his staff to chase them away. Unfortunately, as he was yelling at his staff in Taiwanese, the person who recounted it to me was unable to explain precisely what was communicated. Only that several staff immediately surrounded the family and escorted them away, saying "if you do not order anything, do not stay here". Great customer service. My impression of Taiwanese run dining establishments has always been of the highest regard as the Taiwanese run their shops with the highest standards of professionalism and their customer service has been first class in my experience. I guess the Taiwanese have their black sheep too.
Will I ever go back to find out if they do anything else better, since they clearly cannot do dessert? I think not.
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