Grace Street Café, located in Manhattan’s Koreatown district, specializes in delicious and aesthetically pleasing Korean dessert and drinks. Fortunately for me, I am no stranger to Grace Street Café. My first experience going here was on my birthday last December, where I had their milk tea boba toast and Rose Petal Milk Tea for my first time. Ever since then, I have been longing to try their shaved snow, and it couldn’t be a more perfect time to try it since it is still summer.
The tower of their “O.G” black sesame shaved snow had a dark grey color and a soft, almost sandy feel despite its size, which made shoveling through the velvety ribbons of snow with a long metal spoon more satisfying. The white stream of condensed milk contrasts with the snow’s grey color and slowly falls down to the bottom of the bowl, but the sweetness of both together coming in one spoonful is addicting to the tongue and not overly sweet.
Red adzuki beans make their presence known underneath the mountain of shaved ice and secure their place as the real star of the dessert. The beans give a mushy and earthy textural contrast to the shaved ice, while providing their own sweetness as well. Fresh strawberries decorate the side of the bowl and offer a quick tart bite should you find yourself making the perfect spoon of red beans, shaved ice, and condensed milk.
After hearing about dalgona coffee the past couple of years and being naturally curious about filling my infinite desire for coffee with something new to me that I haven’t tried before, I decided to try a dalgona coffee for the first time. It was recommended that I shake the frothy coffee with the milk before drinking it.
At first, the drink tastes mainly like milk with a hint flavor of coffee, but as the coffee slowly seeps down to the rest of the drink, that instant coffee taste along with sugar and milk becomes a lot more present. The coffee retains its whipped peak for a while before deflating into the milk. Not a bad option at all.
While I didn’t have it this time around, the rose petal milk tea, is both aesthetically pleasing and delicious. The nice pink hue of the drink combined with the rose petals just adds to the Instagram factor of taking pictures that many people who come here do all the time. And who can really say no to boba and milk tea?