passionflower, in chinatown, has a new set of menus. the clean white matt celloglazed foldouts are a sight to behold — quite the encyclopedia of exotic ice cream sundaes — but the hike in prices was a bit less pretty.

for example, i remember the eastern banana split that i had the last time cost around $12. it has been renamed eastern sunrise, and costs $13.50, which, fortunately, is about all that i’d want to pay for a waffle basket filled with green tea, taro and sticky rice ice cream, slices of banana and a lychee-orange compote. mmm…

as it was, the kid ate all but one of the banana slices, and then proceeded to dig into the big ice creamy mountain with her little plastic spoon that we had swiped earlier from the counter. (apparently if you ask the waitperson for an extra metal spoon, they charge you $1.25, so be warned.) i was torn between eating slowly to savour my $13.50 ice cream, and eating quickly so that i’d actually get any ice cream at all. in the end i was scooping great big spoonfulls, and then slowly devouring each one.

we were having sundaes on a sunday, because it was the boy’s birthday, and we’d gone out for early dimsum with a friend of the boy, whose birthday it was too. and now we know that early dimsum means not too many trolleys out, and an endless wait (in vain) for the stuffed, braised eggplant, and being back out on the street much earlier than planned with much less dumpling under the belt.

ah well, because just before 11.30 on a sunday morning is perhaps the best time to visit passionflower. no loud young people lolling about the booths, and no terrible young people’s music shouting out of the speakers. the only music we hear wafts down from the photo sticker machines upstairs. it is like a siren’s call, i tell you: we are halfway up the stairs before the table is cleared.

although we left the boys downstairs, of course. there’s something very stadler and waldorf about this, don’t you think?