Inside Will Goldfarb’s wildly inventive Hong Kong pop-up with Black Sheep Restaurants

Dessert, in most hands, is an afterthought—a polite send-off, a neat little flourish before the bill arrives. But for Will Goldfarb, it is the moment. “Delicious, hopefully, and beautiful. Lastly, interesting,” he says when asked to describe his approach. But if there’s one thing his decades-long career has proven, it’s that desserts, in his hands, are anything but ordinary.

Goldfarb’s dessert journey began in New York, where he made waves in the early 2000s with the first iteration of Room4Dessert, a radical dessert bar that pushed boundaries in ways the city wasn’t quite ready for. Trained in Paris and seasoned in the kitchens of El Bulli, Tetsuya’s and Cibreo, he had all the technical firepower, but his instincts pulled him toward a more unconventional, mischievous form of pastry. New York wasn’t convinced, but Goldfarb moved on, disappearing from the fine dining spotlight and resurfacing somewhere unexpected: Ubud, Bali, where he built Room4Dessert anew. This time, it wasn’t just about plated desserts—it was about nature, healing and community.

“We have an approach that we call botanical modernism which describes how we interpret the natural world in each bite,” he explains. “We focus on traditional wisdom by celebrating Balinese culture. And each dish is built around healing through food.”

Squid Noodle (Photo: Courtesy of Black Sheep)

Incidente Stradale (Photo: Courtesy of Black Sheep)

That brings us to Hong Kong. His GOAT Vol I collaboration with Black Sheep Restaurants saw him take over the rooftop cocktail bar The Majestic Garden, reimagining his Balinese hideaway for two evenings. “We wanted to find a real reason for our cooking and we found it in Traditional Chinese Medicine,” Goldfarb explained. “The Majestic Garden was the perfect platform to celebrate these ingredients in a natural setting. A little slice of Bali in Hong Kong.”

The seven-course menu was a retrospective of his most celebrated creations, spanning two decades of invention and reinvention. The most personal of these? “So hard to say—it’s like debating a favourite child. I think the Red dish is something we love to share because it’s constantly evolving and showcases our use of colour in a playful way.” This latest version, featuring beetroot sponge, rosella Chantilly, dragon fruit meringue and a hawthorn fruit reduction, arrived in Hong Kong with a knowing nod to local ingredients, a tart-sweet balancing act that made a convincing argument for his belief that “things of the same colour taste good together”.

Then came Pandanbert, a panna cotta infused with jiu niang (fermented rice wine), topped with crisp mung bean crumble and a snakefruit “tatin” purée. Meanwhile, the chocolate crème brûlée—featuring Bali’s finest single-origin chocolate and Kusamba sea salt, finished with Sichuan peppercorn bitters—was a reminder that desserts can be dark, rich and just a little dangerous.

Will Goldfarb (Photo: Courtesy of Black Sheep)

Room 4 Dessert in Ubud, Bali (Photo: Courtesy of Black Sheep)

But to define Goldfarb by his desserts alone would be missing the point. His work is as much about community as it is about craft. At Room4Dessert, he’s built something that goes far beyond the pass, with projects that include a pastry academy, a takeaway shop called The Powder Room, and a guesthouse, Shelter Island, that he restored with his team. His latest experiment is a Miyawaki microforest, a dense plantation of native trees designed to reclaim land at an accelerated pace. “It will be our legacy here to have our restaurant ‘swallowed’ up by our forest-to-table projects,” he said, only half-joking.

This, after all, is what makes Goldfarb more than just another pastry genius. He’s a disruptor and a man who will take inspiration from Scarlett Johansson’s lipstick as easily as he will from a centuries-old Balinese remedy. It’s not just about dessert—it’s about the story, the punchline and the moment of surprise.

For a lucky few, The Majestic Garden became a portal to Goldfarb’s world, where desserts don’t just end a meal—they start a conversation. And if you missed it. Well, it turns out there’s always Room4Dessert.