Stay cool with these Korean icy desserts
The K-craze in food is still going strong, and its newest rep is the ice kacang-like bingsu. Ong Huiqi and Michelle Fong eat their way through the recent bloom of bingsu stores to find the ones worth plonking money down for.
Loud K-pop music greets you as soon as you emerge on the fifth floor of Orchard Central, where this café sits. We try its most Instagram-ed treat, the green tea bingsu ($13.90), which while scoring on looks, could have fared better in the taste department. The matcha ice-cream, though flavourful, overshadowed the mildly milky shaved ice. The serving size is fair for its price, but the ice melts quickly, forcing you to dig in quick, before it melts into a watery sea of diluted green tea.
This homegrown brand is more well-known for its fried chicken. But the watermelon bingsu is second on their list of favourites. Clearly, no effort has been spared in its presentation– it's served in a watermelon shell on a wooden tray and includes a large dollop of ice cream perched on its tip, surrounded by watermelon balls. Yet, for all its good looks, the ice is thick and coarse and the milk flavour isn’t as distinct as we expected it to be. Also, $18 for the mini bingsu (there's monster watermelon bingsu for $30, only available at the Centrepoint outlet) is quite a bit to shell for something that doesn’t exactly blow our minds. We’d come back for the chicken, but not the bingsu.
