It’s Friday night in wintry Sydney and I’m eating kakigori, a Japanese frozen dessert with a 1,000-year-old history. This shaved-ice wonder predates modern refrigeration by about 800 years and was originally enjoyed by the elites – you know, the types who could afford chilled blocks of water transported from Japanese mountains. Sei Shōnagon is the 10th-century noblewoman who first wrote about kakigori. I doubt her courtly life much resembles my day-to-day existence, but we both agree: a sweetened bowl of finely crushed ice is a marvel worth documenting.
Kakigori Kaiji in Sydney is only a few weeks old but it’s already popular; every table inside is taken, so I’m nursing a takeaway serve with others on the footpath. My honey-lemon kakigori tastes like a designer frozen Solo slushie. Each spoonful excavates a new joy: a bite of tart lemon peel, sweet lychee jelly, crunchy meringue biscuits. It’s a bracing take on kakigori and feels like the perfect “I can’t have dessert” dessert when you’re full. It’s refreshing and leaves my mouth with an electric citrus buzz.
