Madeleine

When it comes to desserts, at Madeleine, you are spoilt for choice and just plain spoilt. Sure, it has a savoury menu, but this café makes desserts so big and beautiful, you may well want to skip the mains altogether and let yourself eat cake.

The café aims to bring a touch of Parisian chic to Riyadh’s busy Boulevard. The vast space, with its teal and white décor, spans across two floors and doesn’t quite feel like a cosy French café.

What it lacks in ambience, it makes up for with its menu – so impressive is the variety of dessert combinations covered. It’s not just a case of telling a waiter that you’re a strawberry fan, as each dessert comes with its own sub genre. Do you want strawberry mille-feuille cheese cake, strawberry pistachio cake or strawberry tart? The list goes on.

Then it gets more niche, so if you like pomegranate, you can choose from a pomegranate cheesecake, pomegranate pistachio cake or a pomegranate ice cream. You get the point.
Madeline introduces you to dessert combinations that you may never have considered, but you’ll be glad you did. Firm flavour favourites are also covered, from Nutella to Ferrero Rocher.

We’re fans of the gooey date cake, as well as the mixture of creamy and nutty textures in the kunafa pistachio macaroon. One would be more than enough to share between two people. Get ready for some epic cakes, with ambitious flavours and whopper proportions.