Seoul Food #1: Patbingsu

Korean food is a completely new experience to me. There are many new flavors such as the many variations of the red pepper paste used to enhance so many dishes, sweetened red beans as dessert and kimchi in all of its fermented glory. There are also many flavors I am used to, just used in different ways such as sweet potatoes on pizza, ramen with kraft cheese melted on top, spaghetti in a waffle cone and croissants baked with a hot dog in the middle.

Since there are so many new experiences and foods to describe, I will update the blog periodically with different dishes, for all of our friends and family who haven't had the pleasure of trying Korean food. For all of those who have had, please feel free to add their own personal experiences with the food. In this first edition, I am going to talk about patbingsu.

Patbingsu is a dessert that is most commonly found in Baskin Robbins and its many emulators. It is a simple dish of shaved ice, sweetened condensed milk, a topping, then a scoop of ice cream. It is usually sprinkled with cornflakes and gummi fruits. It usually costs about W2,000.

Last weekend, Erin and I visited her friend Sabrina in Seoul. We visited the Gyeongbok Palace, center of power of the Joeseon Dynasty (which we will post pictures of later, but food is more important of course!). Just west of the palace is a neighborhood called Samcheon-Dong (Dong means neighborhood in Korean). This is a very artsy district with a lot of fancy cafes, bars, galleries and restaurants(Notably a lot of Italian restaurants).

In one of the cafes we ordered the Patbingsu seen here. We ordered Red Bean topping, our other options being strawberry or green tea. I was a little nervous because my only other experience with red-beans as sweets had been from the gelatinous pastries stuffed with them which I am not very fond of.

t was a much larger variation of the Baskin-Robbins style. It was about a half pound of shaved ice with the sweetened condensed milk poured over the top. Then on top of that was the red-bean topping, a large scoop of vanilla ice cream and instead of cornflakes it was sprinkled with walnuts. The result was a very delicious and cold dessert. The red beans take to sweetness very well and the actual beans themselves were the biggest treat in the dessert when scooped with the sweetened ice and a walnut piece.


*edit: Erin thought of a better name for this.