Social Media

back

Tiny Bites: Choice Cooperative, Wong Chuk Hang

EatPost Category - EatEat - Post Category - Family FriendlyFamily Friendly

Choice Cooperative – taking up a huge, light and airy space – is a lovely welcoming café that specialises in gluten-free and sugar-free food that is nutritious and delicious. A lot of places think that replacing the gluten with other processed carbohydrates takes the problem away; at Choice, recipes are made using ingredients that are actually good for us, including many plant-based ingredients, and all of the recipes have been approved by Choice’s nutritional therapist, Louise Buckley.

Thumbs Up:
What makes Choice Cooperative really special is the huge playroom alongside the café. Parents can come and order tasty treats, while their kids enjoy the games and climbing frame just next door. Owner Ifat Kafry Hindes is a strong believer in “attachment parenting” and loves being able to bring her kids to work with her keeping them close the whole the time.

pancakes

Although it was lunchtime, we couldn’t resist trying the pancakes from the breakfast menu! Given that it is often very hard to find good gluten-free pancakes. I look for fluffiness in my pancakes, something that is impossible to truly achieve without full-fat, floury batter. For GF pancakes, however, these were as close as could be to being fluffy and didn’t have that nasty cardboard consistency that you can so often find.

ifat's choice salad

Ifat’s best-selling salad is the appropriately named Ifat’s Choice Salad, made with quinoa, mixed greens, orange, pear, cucumber, carrot, tomato and pepper. It was a light, refreshing salad with interesting textures, and I particularly liked the sudden bursts of citrus whenever I found a little piece of orange.

turkey ham sandwich

Finding decent gluten-free bread in Hong Kong is a challenge. It is either dense and cake-like, or crumbly and tasteless. Choice’s gluten-free bread, however, is some of the best I’ve tasted. We tried a selection of sandwiches (smoked salmon and goat’s cheese, turkey ham and mustard mayo, and roasted veggies and goat’s cheese), all made with delicious lemon and poppy seed, or pili nut toast. It is rare for me to eat a sandwich given my love-hate relationship with bread so it was a treat to be able to enjoy sandwiches that almost seemed like the real deal. Our favourite was the turkey ham, with the smoked salmon and goat’s cheese a close second, and I loved the bread so much that a loaf found its way home with me!

choc brownie cake

For dessert, whilst the chocolate brownie cake itself was a little too dry and dense, the icing, made with creamy avocado and cacao balanced it out, creating a delicious, guilt-free treat, and – although it wouldn’t have been my first choice – we absolutely loved the orange and vanilla cake. It was wonderfully moist and outshone even some of the best non-GF cakes I’ve tasted.

turmeric milk

Choice also offers fresh smoothies and juices, as well as some interesting alternatives to coffee. The rooibos latte was comforting and tasty (provided you’re a fan of rooibos in general!)… although we couldn’t decide how we felt about the turmeric milk!

Thumbs Down:
We couldn’t resist the offer of some fresh-from-the-oven blueberry and chocolate muffins. They looked like they would be delicious and had an amazing texture, but unfortunately lacked any kind of flavour. I understand that they were sugar-free, but so were the lovely cakes we had just tasted, so it surprised me that these gorgeously fluffy muffins just tasted of nothing at all.

Stroller Access:
Yes, via the lift

Highchairs:
Yes

Kids Menu:
No, but the menu has a broad enough appeal that there should be no need to worry!

Prices:
Prices are very reasonable, with dishes ranging from $45 to $140.

IMG_6501

All in all, Choice Cooperative is a lovely, welcoming place that’s definitely proving to be a success. People care about what they put in their bodies, and Choice ensures that this is nothing but goodness. We know where we’ll be buying our gluten-free bread!

Choice Cooperative, 7/F BT Centre, 23 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Aberdeen, Hong Kong; 2677 7808

more sassy mama

What's New

We're social

We're social

What we're up to and what inspires us