I know Korean desserts are the next damn thing about Korea in Singapore. Not too sure how the trend got started but I quite like the idea instead of having the same old rainbow cakes in either squares, triangles or even in push-pops form. It's just... meh.
We first started off with the imports of Korean soft serves - Honeycreme and the organic Milkcow. The trend came and went pretty quick... But this time round, we have Korean's super sweet dessert - Bingsu - that is the shaved ice dessert. To many Singaporeans, it might be just another country's ice kachang. However, Korean Bingsu comes in many different flavors, with red bean being the most common ones. While the dessert trend has been on-going, I only started trying them out these days! (I'm just a late boomer, sorry.) Will the trend last?
I had the original flavor "Patbingsu" which means red bean bingsu. Was pretty surprised that the red bean was only available at the bottom and having bingsu in a cup simply made things much more difficult. I couldn't stir easily and the ice shavings dropped everywhere when I wanted to remove my spoon out of the cup! So this means at the beginning I'm just eating shaved ice with ice cream.. And abit of nuts.
However, the mango bingsu tasted better. Maybe Ed waited for mine to arrive so the shaved ice was slightly melted, but everything was easier to mix together! Might be the generous serving of mango puree too~
Worth the money? Not so! Would really appreciate if they could change to mini bowls instead of cups for easier consumption~
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On another occassion, Ed and I went over to Bibing's Korean cafe as I needed to claim my $2 Choco Cheese Toast using the app 'Sugar'. With Sugar, you can purchase items at a much lower price simply by sharing the deal with a tap! The value in your account depends on how much credits you want to top up (with your actual cash from credit cards). I've got the free credits from signing up, so I didn't use any actual cash just yet!
The cafe is tucked in the streets of Chinatown, along Smith Street. For a Friday night, it was considered pretty quiet. The cafe's interior was beautifully decorated with flowers, which represented the 4 seasons experienced in Korea. The walls also have photos of the food items that are served in the cafe. A very cosy and visual cafe!
Claimed my "free" Chocolate Cheese Toast but I didn't quite like it. It was a tad dry for my liking (I know, toasts are dry but...) or maybe it's just me preferring french toast more. The cheese didn't have a strong taste, and instead the margarine on top overpowered the cheesy taste! Not worth that usual price of $8.
I didn't want to look cheapo to just come in and claim my toast (and Ed doesnt like cheese anyway), so we ordered a Chocolate Bingsu ($14) to share. This bingsu is totally for sweet tooth people! Both of us were trying our best to stay away from sweet stuff but this made us commit a great sin, seriously. By the way, the brownie was goood.
If some of you were late likers on Instagram, you would've seen chunks of comments left on that photo I posted. Apparently there were some miscomm between the staff and us. We were told that out of all 4 toasts, only the Chocolate Toast was available. That's quite disappointing but we still looked at the choices for Bingsu for an alternative. However, we're told (again) that Red Bean and Tiramisu flavor "wasn't available". Tiramisu was a new flavor and had its soft launch around the NDP period, but it's pretty shocking to know that Red Bean (the most basic flavor for bingsu!) wasn't ready! We've had no choice but to stick to the normal Chocolate. However, the boss told us that Red Bean flavor is always available, but the photos are not available on the menu. Such a pity!! If only the staff told us clearer, we would've chosen the red bean or even the tiramisu instead of chocolate!
This cafe is definitely one of the places to go for bingsu. However, I wouldn't be back again so soon as I hope they'll have everything ready on menu first!
Next up - Cafe Insadong, maybe?
x.