The shake bingsu

Add Bing’s milkshake-inspired, red bean-free bingsu is a tasty, dessert hybrid


Bingsu is the summer dessert of the nation.

At legendary bingsu spots, people will wait in droves for a bowl of those cold flecks of shaved ice, topped with sweet red beans.

In Busan, one can even enjoy this dessert at street stalls, where it is made on the spot and served up in quaint little bowls.

In short, bingsu is a ubiquitous treat and can be easily found in most cafes and bakeries around this time of year.

While purists will clamor for the bingsu in its most traditional form, many enjoy the variations on the dessert that have been popping up with increasing frequency.

Beans, no beans, ice cream, no ice cream ― the options are endless. To keep things simple, it might be best to group the modern-day bingsu into two broad categories ― bean-friendly and bean-free.

Though fans of the red bean might balk at the idea of a bingsu sans beans, the bean-free version is becoming something of a norm, appearing on menus alongside its bean-friendly cohorts. 

Add Bing, which first opened in Yeongdeungpo’s mammoth Times Square before opening a second outpost in Serosugil this June, serves up excellent bean-free renditions.

Owner Ara Koh, a fashion designer and self-taught bingsu artisan, has managed to take the classic American shake concept and meld it with the Korean bingsu.

“I made a lot of shakes so I thought it would be good as a bingsu,” said the 31-year old Parsons alum.

Drawing inspiration from time spent eating around New York, Koh took an American diner-inspired approach to the Korean dessert.

With the popular Oreo bingsu, the classic chocolate sandwich cookie takes the spotlight.

After filling a bowl up with superfine shaved ice soaked in a milk-based elixir, it is topped with vanilla ice cream that has been blended with Oreos, then sprinkled with crumbled Oreos and studded again with large chunks of the cookie.

What you get is a glorified (and utterly delicious) cookies-and-cream mash-up, a mixtape of all those good bits, shards of chocolate wafer, cream from the sandwich, gooey ice cream that would be too sweet if it weren’t for the cool, milky bits of shaved ice in between.

Koh understands the beauty of the commercial cookie and works her magic again with Add Bing’s banana caramel crunch bingsu (only available at the Serosugil store).

Those caramelized Lotus biscuits that often come with your order of coffee add a nostalgic and tasty pop to the banana split-esque confection.

When the dessert first arrives, one might be surprised by the presentation. An indistinguishable mass of ice cream covered with bits of Lotus crumble tops the shaved ice-milk base.

One spoonful is all that is needed to discover that banana, caramel, Lotus cookies, honey-roasted nuts and vanilla ice cream have been blended together to create a heady, sugary, flavor bomb reminiscent of the pie shake (where whole slices of pie are blended with ice cream).

To get the most out of Add Bing’s bean-free bingsu, Koh recommends mixing everything together into one big messy deal before digging in.

“I like it natural,” she said of her approach to bingsu presentation.

Though Add Bing’s Serosugil outlet already offers up nine variations of bingsu, including four red bean versions, Koh said that a new one featuring coconut milk is the works and will likely be out this month.

By Jean Oh (oh_jean@heraldcorp.com)

● Add Bing; 1F #104 545-2 Sinsa-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul; open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily; (02) 511-8062; bingsu costs 8,000 won to 13,000 won