Dello Mano at 5,300 m: Bringing Brownies to Everest Base Camp
We love hearing about how our customers incorporate Dello Mano into the most memorable moments of their lives. Since our founding in 2006, our premium luxury brownies and cakes have been present at countless events, from birthday parties and bar mitzvahs to weddings and proposals. Some of our customers have found particularly novel ways to involve Dello Mano in their memory-making moments. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing some of our favorite stories from the Dello Mano archives.
This story belongs to a customer we’ll call Alice, who visited our former Doggett Street store to regale us with the role Dello Mano played in her fortieth birthday. The big four-oh isn’t just any birthday, and this wasn’t just any party: she and her husband took the opportunity to fulfill their lifelong dreams of climbing Mount Everest. After all, if you have to go over the hill, why not go over the biggest one the world has to offer?
They bought their plane tickets, booked their guides, and collected all the necessary gear. Then there was the question of how they would have a birthday party on Mount Everest. A cake was out of the question — they would carry all that they needed on their backs, and every extra gram would feel like a kilo. Besides, the windy, oxygen-thin Himalayan atmosphere is no place to try to light a birthday candle. Alice wanted a treat that could pack pounds of decadence into a cubic centimeter, the dessert with the greatest deliciousness density possible. Then she thought of Dello Mano brownies.
Alice was a fervent fan of Dello Mano well before we opened our shops at Tattersalls and New Farm. She first tasted our brownies at the Farmers Market at New Farm Park, where we still have a stand nestled among the avenue of trees. One bite of our Classic Belgian Chocolate Luxury Brownie and Alice fell fast and hard. Each piece of our Classic Brownie was a cubic inch of rich chocolate bound together with the finest farm-fresh ingredients, so compact and carefully-engineered that it could serve as the world’s most luxurious astronaut food. Perhaps Alice thought of astronauts, or perhaps she had heard that scientists in Antarctica snack on chocolate because it handles the freezing temperatures better than most foods. Either way, she recognised that the Classic brownie cubes were tailor-made for her journey, so much so that it was almost as though we had anticipated it.
Alice and her husband trekked for over two weeks through the Nepali countryside, a jagged landscape punctuated by bustling Sherpa villages and quiet monasteries, before they reached Everest Base Camp. It was one of the most challenging hikes they had ever completed, and it was only the first leg of a journey that would take nearly two months. Through all glute-pounding climbs, the gasping for breath in the thin air, the throbbing in her feet at the end of the day, Alice never forgot that this was the easy part. Nor did she forget the Dello Mano brownie.
It was Alice’s fortieth birthday when they arrived at the base camp. She and her husband clambered up a well-situated rock, one where they could look down upon where they had been and crane their necks up at where they had yet to go. Finally, ceremoniously, Alice took the brownie out of her pack. She pulled at a corner of the gold foil to reveal the intensely dark, warm color of the chocolate within. She felt her heart beating faster, and it wasn’t just the altitude sickness.
The brownie had frozen, though its richness prevented it from becoming rock-hard; it had something of the consistency of very cold ice cream. Her husband unsheathed his knife and sliced off thin slivers, which curled like ribbon as they fell into her hands. She placed it a slice on her tongue and let it slowly melt. Suddenly, she felt she was in New Farm Park again, among the roses and the jacaranda, falling in love with Dello Mano for the first time. The brownie recalled that first summer memory, but it also tasted of achievement. She took another sliver and relished her accomplishments, not only on their climb but in all her forty years.
“Happy birthday, Alice,” her husband said.
Alice gazed over the snowy expanse, the taste of Belgian chocolate lingering on her tongue. For once, she felt sure of her decisions and her direction in life. After all, she had certainly decided to carry the right brownie to Mount Everest!
If you have a Dello Mano Classic Brownie story to share with us then please do so by sharing on our Facebook Page – we’ll reward a random Dello Mano story with a box of the original and the only Classic Brownie. Invented right here in Brisbane, the Dello Mano Luxury Classic Brownie paved the way for brownies in Australia.