First Glance: Gelato Pique Café, Sanlitun

Gelato Pique Café is adorable with its wooden furniture and elegant pastel-themed decorations, and reminds of a cute European cottage, preferably in the alps. All of this rings true, except that this concept originated in Tokyo, Japan. Next door, and attached, is Mila Owen, the fashion brand associated with the café. Their clothes are along the same trend; pretty, cute, and pastel.

Gelato Pique Café's menu boasts hamburgers, crepes (both savory and sweet), desserts, and more. The savory crepes are tasty - we tried the mustard chicken salee (RMB 68), which was basically a crepe topped off with crunchy salad, fried chicken and mushrooms, a poached egg poached to soft perfection, shaved parmesan cheese, cherry tomatoes, and dressed with honey mustard dressing and balsamic vinegar. It tasted good, although a relatively small serving, especially for RMB 68.

Our sweet choice was the cacao flavored dessert crepe (RMB 62), topped with vanilla sugar, almonds, pistachios, and chocolate ice cream. This was even better, it was simply heavenly and was completely gone in about two minutes. Including any trace of ice cream on the plate.

The staff are extremely attentive, refilling our water (a lot), which was welcome because it was basically an entire fruit salad in a pitcher, leaving us to marveled at the blueberries, strawberries, and oranges floating around. By the end of our lunch we probably had our five suggested pieces of fruit a day.

We reckon skip the savory, and go for the sweet. Just do it, you know you want to. Unless you can’t handle the sweetness, then do go for the savory. But don't.

Gelato Pique Café
Daily 10am-10pm. S5-15B Taikoo Li Sanlitun, 19 Sanlitun Lu, Chaoyang District
朝阳区三里屯路19号三里屯太古里南区S5-15B

More stories by this author here.

Email: margauxschreurs@truerun.com
Instagram: @s.xuagram

Photos: Margaux Schreurs and Erin Strong