Saturday 20 June 2015

The Cool Snack of Summer: Patpingsu!


Patpingsu should be available all year-round, and not just only in summer. Last year, I went back to a cafe in Hannam-dong during autumn and asked for patpingsu, which I ordered just a couple of weeks before. The cafe staff told me that they stopped serving patpingsu because...it was already autumn. Waaaah!
                  (We ordered two bowls; one for me 
                      and one for them. Ha-ha-ha!)

But this summer, I don't need to go back to that cafe. I can almost go anywhere and enjoy the milky crushed iced topped with a mound of sweetened red bean paste. Patpingsu is the Korean version of the Philippine icy snack, halo-halo, some variations of which have about a dozen ingredients mostly consisting of sweetened tropical fruits, flan and ice cream. Maybe this is why I like drowning myself in patpingsu; I miss my halo-halo back home. :-(

And last week, I introduced my colleagues to one of the best patpingsu cafes in town, Dongbinggo!  Of course, they enjoyed it!  Although some coffee shops in the building's arcade serve patpingsu, they are all copycat patpingsu. Once you've tasted one, you've tasted all. They all look the same, and are priced the same.

Dongbinggo boasts that it only uses locally grown red beans and that they make their own paste. Although their main shop is in Ichon-dong in the Yongsan District here in Seoul, they have a stall at a food court in a Myeongdong department store.

It will be nasty hot in the coming weeks. So, I will have to go back to Dongbinggo for some patpingsu every now and then if I need to survive this summer. And by the way, sharing a bowl is a no-no for me; I want the whole bowl all to myself. Ha-ha-ha! You might want to do the same. :-)

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