[Oahu - Waikiki] Island Vintage Shave Ice

As I have done on trips back to Korea, I wanted to try all the shave ice (Korea = bingsu) I could while I was in Hawaii.

The first night we were pretty tired because of the travel, so we stuck around the hotel area for dinner and our choices were limited. We ended up at Island Vintage Shave Ice shack at the Royal Hawaiian Center.

Since this is probably a pretty common experience, figured I would write a post to share with you what we ordered/got and what we thought of our first experience.

My mom and I shared a specialty combination - Heavenly Lilikoi. Since this was my first Hawaiian shave ice, I didn't know what to expect. I was expecting it to be slightly fruitier than I am used to with bingsu and maybe a little fluffier.

The flavor was very sweet. I honestly don't know if I could have eaten much more than I did. I am not so sure how natural the flavors we had were, but my dad had a strawberry one all to himself and his seemed to be made with at least partially natural flavors, so I have some hope that some of the passionfruit, at least, was partially natural.

I wish I would have read the menu better, but I got a little overwhelmed. The Heavenly Lilikoi came with frozen yogurt on the inside. This was a surprise to me, but the tartness of the frozen yogurt helped to balance the sweetness of the rest of the shave ice.

If you look back up to the first photo, you'll see my dad's 1-flavor shave ice. That was purely strawberry flavor and ice. He was a little bummed out that he didn't get any frozen yogurt or ice cream, but you can definitely add it if you so choose.

Island Vintage Shave Ice is literally a shack. There's no real place to sit for customers, so keep that in mind if you have a big group. We were able to find some benches nearby to have our shave ice before walking back to the hotel.

 It was a pretty cool and refreshing night.
