i first read about pichet ong, a famous dessert chef who helmed the now defunct P*ONG restaurant in nyc right before my trip there last year. P*ONG was featured in my timeout nyc as one of city’s best eats (i only use timeout btw). despite being enamoured by pichet ong’s vision of fusion desserts (asian + western as he grew up in sg, thailand and msia) and mix of savoury and sweet – i didn’t get a chance to try P*ONG out due to time constraint. it’s unfortunate that it’s now since defunct, just like how WD-50 was defunct when i was there!
hence, you can imagine my excitement when i popped by bras basah last friday afternoon to run an errand for work, and i saw the sweet spot by pichet ong selling at a dingy 2nd hand bookshop for only 20$. and the best thing of all? it wasn’t even 2nd hand 
the owner told me he had gotten it from a bookstore that had gone bust. i was literally singing my way back to work since i managed to shave off $33 savings and the book was worth every penny because of the gorgeous recipes, visuals and vision. of course, now i get to recreate a taste of P*ONG from the comfort of my own home.
the sweet spot eschews the standard dessert recipes for entries like passionfruit dahn taht (egg tart), chocolate and vietnamese coffee tart, poached pears in oolong tea, ovaltine and milk chocolate kulfi with caramelised banana and grand marnier tofu cheesecake – are you drooling yet? it’s really refreshing compared to the jelat western desserts i’m sick of seeing on all my cookbooks. some of the more classic asian recipes e.g. mango pudding and steamed pandan layer cake are still included in this gorgeous tome, which is perfectly fine with me since i love them for everyday affairs. after devouring all the recipes in a span of 3 hours i felt a pang of asian pride, since asian desserts have always been marginalised, despite the incredible variety across the many asian cultures.
what i really like is that i have easy access to almost all the ingredients he listed from tropical fruits to indian/japanese/thai etc ingredients being in singapore, contrary to many other cookbooks
