On a rainy morning, we visited the newly opened Ice Frost Dessert Café at Carter Road, Bandra. Dotted with vivid blue and white tiles, the intimate space harks back to an American ice cream parlor from Hollywood films, consisting as Grease and Back To The Future. This café is the maiden Indian assignment of Ice Frost Dessert Café from Phuket, Thailand. Opened in 2015 by dessert aficionados Rujiroj Chaiyabhat and Sakda Pansri, this dessert chain is present in Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Since the dessert shop is at the beginning of Thailand, we watched for delicious Thai desserts, including mango sticky rice and sweet Thai crêpes. However, to our surprise, the restaurant specializes in Korean desserts, and its signature dish is bingsu.
Bingsu, what?
Bingsu is extremely popular in Korea and Thailand, particularly throughout the summer. It is made of ice shavings and normally accommodates sweetened condensed milk, fruit syrups, and clean fruits of strawberries, mangoes, kiwis, and bananas. The balance between sweet fruit syrup and ice shavings is crucial. If the fruit syrup overpowers the dessert, it can become too candy. We start with the mango bingsu (Rs 159), which has the proper layers of ice and milk shavings, fruit syrup, fresh mangoes, and vanilla ice cream. While all the layers of an excellent bingsu are there, the fruit syrup is overwhelming, making it too sweet for our liking. However, if the wonder is toned down by reducing the fruit syrup and growing the ice shavings, it may be a real winner.
Kiwis get it right
Famous bingsu flavors include strawberry, chocolate, matcha, and paan. But it’s the Kiwi bingsu that bowls us over. The tartness of the fresh kiwi portions is balanced by the beauty of the fruit syrup, resulting in a delicious, clean, and mild dessert. The flawlessly balanced layers of the ice and milk shavings, fresh kiwi fruit portions, and vanilla ice cream with fruit syrup are a flavor explosion in our mouths. The different textures add to the palatability of this dessert.
Chocolate springs a surprise.
Next up, we will try the Belgian chocolate gelato panini. To be sincere, we were hesitant to taste this dessert because if sweet and savory desserts are not made properly, it may be a disaster. However, on the contrary, it seems to be one of the great desserts on the menu. It contains a rich and creamy Belgian chocolate gelato in a buttery, gentle bun, crowned with a rich chocolate sauce and crunchy dark chocolate chips. The chocolate panini is not overly sweet either, and the lovely ice cream and the savory bread pair flawlessly.
We give up our dessert fiesta with milkshakes, which cost R139. The friendly server recommends the chocolate KitKat shake and the tiramisu coffee shake. Both the bloodless milkshakes are neither too candy nor too heavy. The former has portions of KitKat, while the latter tastes like a liquid tiramisu dessert. While we preferred a stronger coffee flavor in our tiramisu coffee shake, the milkshakes are creamy, flavourful, and hit the spot.
While Ice Frost Dessert Café’s India menu also consists of shake fries (milkshakes crowned with fries), fizzy boba coolers (coolers with tapioca bubbles), and boba teas (teas with tapioca bubbles), they are no longer presented on the Carter Road keep. They are expected to be available in the final week of June. Overall, the emblem’s first assignment in India is a welcome exchange. However, we want them to tweak their desserts to include extranatural components and much fewer artificially sweetened syrups.
