MoMo & Coco

HK’s Best Asian Ice Cream Shops – Volume 2 (Beyond Central)

Introduction

 

Last year – our first year in Hong Kong – we published a round-up of the most creative and inventive ice Asian flavour ice cream stores in Hong Kong, focusing entirely on the Central District where they all seemed to be curiously concentrated. See prior ice cream guide here. Since then, ice cream fever seems to have swept across wider swathes of the city, and in this second “Hong Kong’s Best Asian Ice Cream” volume, we venture beyond the Central District to track down ice cream stores with other hit Asian flavours. The below list is the result of our search. We are still a little gobsmacked that ice cream is almost reaching to USD $10 in the city….

 

Asian icecream stop #1: Nook

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Nook, Kennedy Town.
  • ☑ Budget: $-$$ (HKD $58)
  • ☑ Must eat flavour: HK Milk Tea, Brown Sugar Tofu Pudding, Golden Kiwi Sorbet.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story:  Just a block from the Kennedy Town waterfront, Nook combines Asian ice cream flavours with traditional Hong Kong bubble egg waffle. This hybrid dessert reminds us very much of the bubble egg waffle trend that exploded across NYC about a decade ago, albeit at Nook, it is pared back to ice cream that is actually tasty, and bubble egg waffle that does not disintegrate into a soft sploshy mess, but rather retains its toasty crispy feel. In a short time, Nook has become one of our favourite weekend dessert treat spots for after we have finished picking up groceries and running errands.
 

Asian icecream stop #2: Edenly

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Edenly, Sai Ying Pun.
  • ☑ Budget: $$ (HKD $78 for two scoops)
  • ☑ Must eat flavour: Any of the peach varieties.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story:  Located up a steep hill and beyond a somewhat inconspicuous shopfront, Edenly is an easy-to-miss spot. It stands out for churning a weekly-changing array of creamy ice cream and lighter sorbet, the majority of which are infused with a Chinese tea or Asian fruit flavour. We find that the combination varieties featuring peach are the most strongly-flavoured, so if you are peach fan, make a beeline here. We have tried it paired with peppercorn, pandan, lychee, cantaloupe, osmanthus, oolong, pu er tea etc, but these flavours are somewhat muted compared to the peach overtones. One of the best parts of Edenly’s ice cream is that they are eaten with a cold metal spoon — no annoying paper or wooden spoons here!
 

Asian icecream stop #3: Yeah Gelato

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Yeah Gelato, Causeway Bay.
  • ☑ Budget: $ (HKD $42 for one scoop)
  • ☑ Must eat flavour: Rice, Ginger Milk…everything? 😛
  • ☑ Short and sweet story:  By comparison to many countries (especially USA and Europe for example), some of the best restaurants and dessert spots in Hong Kong can be found inside shopping malls and hotels. Imported from the mainland, Yeah Gelato is one such example, a barely-there frontage inside a cramp shopping mall where the main tenants are Japanese lifestyle brands. Yet, it draws more crowds than any of the other anchor tenant stores. Whipped into tall peaks reminiscent of gelaterias that we last saw in Milan, Yeah Gelato redefines “freshness” by having a time counter on the ice cream menu to indicate how long a batch has been sitting out. It also distinguishes itself by texture. “Silk-like” is a word we would not ordinarily use to describe ice cream, but it seems rather apt here – insanely smooth yet not leaving us weighed down as we might feel after a typical ice cream, barely sweet yet very well flavoured. We are finding it hard to decide whether we ought to crown Yeah or Messina as the best ice cream purveyor in HK.
 

Asian icecream stop #4: Ganto Gelato

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Ganto Gelato, Causeway Bay.
  • ☑ Budget: $ (HKD $38 for one scoop, HKD $50 for two scoops)
  • ☑ Must eat flavour: Tofu pudding.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story:  Alongside Sleep Well Eat More and Yeah Gelato above, Ganto Gelato is one of the few ice cream shops in Hong Kong that focuses overwhelmingly on Asian ice cream flavours. The other ice cream spots featured on both volumes of our “Hong Kong’s Best Asian Ice Cream” guides are by comparison, more Western-centric, offering such a small smattering of Asian ice cream flavours that you could count them on a few fingers. Leaning towards a traditional thick creamy ice cream texture, Ganto’s ice cream menu changes monthly, skimming both East and South East Asian ice cream flavours. In more recent months, the menu highlights a slight fondness for Japanese-inspired flavours. Ganto’s excellent “Tofu Pudding” ice cream however is a consistent mainstay, and should definitely be one of your ice cream scoop picks.
 

Asian icecream stop #5: Heartwarming

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Heartwarming, Tai Hang / Causeway Bay.
  • ☑ Budget: $ (HKD $28)
  • ☑ Must eat flavour: Black sesame.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story:  A stone’s throw from Causeway Bay, Heartwarming has the most “local” feel of ice cream purveyors on this list, and is well known amongst the local foodie community for its black sesame ice cream. You might be wondering why such an ice cream features on this list. After all, black sesame – alongside matcha and red bean – is not a particularly “creative” Asian flavour. In fact, it is rather quotidien. However, in terms of flavour intensity, we do not think that we have ever had a black sesame ice cream as pronounced as Heartwarming’s version. The short story is that if you love savoury, nutty black sesame as a dessert, you will love this. Be forewarned though that it melts very quickly, so this is not an ice cream for walking around. We were not even halfway through the ice cream cone before our hands looked like they had been splattered with squid ink.
 

Asian icecream stop #6: Blendies

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Blendies, Tsim Sha Sui.
  • ☑ Budget: $-$$ (HKD $58)
  • ☑ Must eat flavour: Thai Milk Tea, Roasted Corn.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story:  Moving from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon side, we recently checked out Blendies, an import from Thailand that has attracted lines and lines of ice cream addicts since opening. We don’t think we have waited so long for ice cream before – about 30 minutes on our very first visit, to about 15 minutes on the subsequent visits. Is it worth the hype though? If you like your ice sweet toned, scooped onto toasty made-to-order waffle cones, and dipped with crunchy crisps, absolutely. If you like your ice cream with pronounced flavours, not really. We found Blendies’ flavours somewhat muted. In any event, Blendies is a sweet preposition for when you find yourself needing to punctuate shopping mall walking-around at K11 Art Mall.
 
 

Leave a comment