“Very Niche, But Where Can I Find” is a new recurring column where Food & Drink Editor Patricia Kelly Yeo will track down—and in some cases try—hard-to-find food and drink items across Los Angeles.
Have an elusive dish or drink you’d like to know where to find? Email p.kelly.yeo@timeout.com.
Of the various shaved ice desserts beloved across Asia and its diaspora, Japanese kakigori might be the hardest to track down in Los Angeles. In Koreatown, you’ll find plenty of joints serving Korean bingsoo, which often includes chopped fruit and a scoop of ice cream. The San Gabriel Valley is full of boba shops and dessert cafés serving variations on Chinese and Taiwanese bao bing—miniature snow-capped peaks doused in brown sugar syrup and condensed milk, plus various sweet, oft-chewy items like mochi, boba, red beans and grass jelly. There’s rainbow-hued halo-halo at Filipino restaurants scattered across L.A. County and a handful of options for Hawaiian shave ice; both dishes can trace their roots back to Japanese immigrants and overseas workers making kakigori.
If you’re in L.A. and jonesing explicitly for Japanese-style shaved ice, however, you might find yourself in a bit of a pickle. Made of ultra-light, extremely fluffy shaved ice, plus flavored syrup, whipped cream and sometimes other toppings, this time-sensitive window for this frozen dessert is even more punishing than a scoop of ice cream. Step away for mere minutes and that snow-like pile won’t be as you left it. In essence, it’s a rare, fleeting delicacy—which is why when I find a place that serves kakigori, I always order it. A few years ago, LAist reported on where you could find the dish in L.A., but most of the places have since closed, stopped offering the dish or were only offering kakigori in pop-up form.
After a lot of scouting and a little bit of brain freeze, I’ve found five great restaurants in L.A. that serve kakigori. All of them are outside of the South Bay. Though I didn’t find any standouts while researching this article, I have a hunch the region is home to a few under-the-radar kakigori options given the area’s high density of Japanese restaurants. Note: For the sake of narrowing down what constitutes kakigori, I’ve excluded any option that uses a milky frozen ice base, which isn’t traditionally part of the dish, even if the dish is named as such on the menu. One example that comes to mind? Tsujita San Gabriel’s milky shaved ice. What I think most people, including me, are looking for in Japanese kakigori over Taiwanese bao bing or Korean bingsoo are bites of pure, fluffy and unflavored ice interspersed with sweet toppings.
Of all the iterations of Japanese shaved ice I tried, my favorite place by far is Tonchin, the New York City ramenya that opened in Larchmont last year. Available in strawberry, mango, matcha and coffee flavors ($16–$18), each soft mound of ice comes topped with the restaurant’s signature honey-sweetened whipped cream. The matcha variety uses ceremonial-grade matcha, giving the dessert a deep forest green hue, while the affogato-like coffee version gilds the lily with vanilla ice cream. Both fruity desserts use fresh mango and strawberry and high-quality housemade syrups, and I couldn’t recommend these desserts enough, especially after making a meal of delicious Tokyo-style tonkotsu and other well-executed Japanese fare.
A second, slightly more rarified option is Yess, a farm-to-table Japanese restaurant in the Arts District. It’s received glowing reviews from the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, but I honestly didn’t enjoy my meal when I visited Yess last fall on a media comp. This is primarily because I found the entire experience extremely overpriced. Since then, head chef Junya Yamasaki—who first made a name for himself in London with Koya—has flipped the format of the menu not once, but twice, with the most recent version being considerably more affordable. One of menu’s constants throughout it all, however, has been Yess’s excellent kakigori ($14), which currently comes in two flavors: Irish coffee and citrus enzyme. For caffeine-sensitive diners like me, the chef is thoughtful enough to offer a decaffeinated version of the latter, and it ended up being the highlight of my meal.
The coffee-whiskey syrup, chewy pieces of date and whipped cream are all that augment the mound of perfectly fluffy shaved ice, which members of the staff shave using a hand-cranked machine visible from the chef’s counter. While I’ve yet to try the citrus enzyme version, Yess’s Irish coffee kakigori impressed me enough that I’d recommend visiting the restaurant for the kakigori—and the kakigori alone. (The savory portions of the menu, in my experience, leave much to be desired in terms of actual flavor, even if the most recent version of Yess’s menu has vastly lowered prices.)
Perhaps the most surprising place serving a skillful rendition of kakigori is Nobu LA. Also available at Nobu Newport Beach, the dish includes a pile of shaved ice doused with coconut condensed milk. The center conceals coconut yuzu sorbet and candied lychees, and diners are also given a small pitcher of mango passion fruit syrup. Tunneling to the hidden center makes for a delightful dessert experience. Note that this wonderful dish is not offered at Nobu Malibu, an oversight I largely chalk up to the oceanfront location’s pretty privilege, or, quite possibly, a difference in the size of the kitchen or average nightly customer volume.
Among “food people,” likely the most well-known place in town for kakigori is still Daniel Son’s Katsu Sando, which offers kakigori in a single flavor that changes depending on the season. The chef, who also runs Gardena’s Sushi Sonagi, invested in a top-of-the-line electric shaving machine from Kuramoto Ice, a Japanese company that’s been selling high-quality ice for over 100 years. At both Katsu Sando’s Chinatown and San Gabriel locations, you can now find impossibly soft mountains of shaved ice topped with strawberry purée, crumbled shortbread and whipped cream. Hidden inside is a scoop of vanilla ice cream. In the past, Son has also done versions with lemon and blueberry, ube, hot cocoa and watermelon.
Surprisingly, this was the version of kakigori ($14.95 for a small, $15.95 for a large) I liked the least; I found the entire dish slightly cloying, and the mound of whipped cream fell by the wayside before I could even take a proper photo. The vanilla ice cream felt like overkill to me, and, at the risk of sounding like a walking stereotype, the entire thing was just too sweet for me. At the same time, I’d gladly try Katsu Sando’s next seasonal kakigori; as of writing, the strawberry shortcake kakigori has just been discontinued, with plans to release another in the near future.
The only place serving traditional Japanese kakigori that I’ve yet to try is Sushi Rush at Grand Central Market, which serves the dish ($9.50) in strawberry and matcha flavors. From the sampuru (plastic reference) versions available at the counter, it looks as though both versions use flavored syrup and then drizzle condensed milk over the top, with the matcha variety adding a mound of red beans on top. Feel free to visit Sushi Rush firsthand and let me know what you think; you’ll find my email at the top of this article.
Tonchin LA
5665 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles
Mon, Tue 5:30–10pm; Wed–Sat noon–10pm; Sun noon–9pm
Yess
2001 E 7th St, Los Angeles
Thu–Sun 6–9pm
Nobu LA
903 N La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles
Mon–Thu 6–10pm; Fri, Sat 6–11pm; Sun 6–10pm
Katsu Sando
710 W Las Tunas Dr Unit C6, San Gabriel
Tue–Sun 11am–8pm
736 N Broadway #105, Los Angeles
Tue–Sun 11am–8pm (Kakigori is offered Fri–Sun only)
Sushi Rush (inside Grand Central Market)
317 S Broadway, Los Angeles
Mon–Thu 11:30am–8pm; Fri, Sat 11:30am–9pm, Sun 11:30am–8pm