For years, soft-serve ice cream has had a stranglehold on San Francisco. It’s fair to say the trend arrived via New York’s Momofuku Noodle Bar, where, in 2007, pastry chef Christina Tosi (now of Milk Bar fame) put soft serve on the menu, gifting restaurants the go-ahead to serve a childlike dessert dispensable with only the pull of a lever.
But if you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed a new dessert coming out of restaurant kitchens — one that is similarly whimsical, nostalgic and, often, smothered in toppings.
Shave ice has become the hottest dessert in town, claiming real estate at restaurants of all stripes: Michelin Guide-listed spots such as Nisei and Ernest, the James Beard Award-nominated Abacá and fast-casual Little Aloha in the Parkside, among others.
These ice-based desserts go by myriad names. The treats include Hawai’i’s shave ice — never “shaved” — which typically has a coarse texture and stars vibrant syrups in flavors like blue pineapple, lilikoi (passion fruit) and bubble gum. On the more restrained end of the spectrum, Japanese kakigori, Korean bingsu and Taiwanese bao bing are prized for their fluffy textures, so light the ice just disappears on the tongue. In the Philippines, there’s halo-halo; India enjoys the ice gola, similar to a snow cone; Italians eat granitas; and on a hot day in Mexico, you might order a raspado.
This summer, chef Chris Yang of Taiwanese restaurant Piglet & Co in the Mission launched a Saturday-only shave-ice pop-up, Pigloo. “I love shave ice, but in this neighborhood, there was really no place to get a good one,” Yang says.
The team uses a Taiwanese machine to produce “snow.” Yang, who is Taiwanese and spent time living and cooking in Hawai’i, blends both shave ice traditions. Customers can choose among popular Taiwanese flavors such as ginger, brown sugar and winter melon. Eclectic toppings include condensed milk, salted egg custard, mung bean jam, candied barley and mochi.
At the Fisherman’s Wharf Filipino restaurant Abacá, pastry chef Joana Bautista takes inspiration from two desserts popular in the Philippines: iskrambol, or ice scramble, and halo-halo, a kind of frozen parfait. The former is typically dyed pink and sold by street vendors outside of schools. Bautista’s “Halo Halo Skrambol” elevates the after-school treat with a sweetened base of strawberry and milk that’s covered in house-made marshmallow, chocolate syrup and chunks of fresh fruit. “And just to be a little fancy, we top it with a little gold flake,” she adds.
Shave ice has the benefit of being easily riff-able. At Ernest, chef Brandon Rice keeps a seasonal kakigori, the Japanese dessert, on the menu at all times. The current version is Brentwood yellow corn; previous flavors have included early-summer strawberry, mangonada and red shiso and pluot.
At stylish Indian restaurant Copra, an icy dessert has become one of the most recognizable dishes. The restaurant’s name means “dried coconut,” so Chef Sri Gopinathan wanted to create a dessert that shined a spotlight on the fruit. He drew inspiration from his youth, when he would spend the equivalent of a quarter on an ice gola in the afternoon.
The restaurant’s “God’s Own” variation has a base of sweetened coconut porridge, with caramelized coconut, coconut milk and coconut ice. The name is a reference to the fact that Kerala, the southwestern Indian state where Gopinathan grew up, is referred to as “God’s own country.”
“It gives me that nostalgia,” Gopinathan says. “I mean, all of us have a child inside, and I can never forget buying an ice gola after school.”