Los Angeles is home to numerous dessert shops that feature a range of treats from cupcakes to doughnuts to shakes. Urban Confections will select dessert restaurants whose only West Coast location is Los Angeles, highlighting students’ opportunities to taste the city’s distinctive flavors. Follow columnist Lindsay Weinberg around Los Angeles as she samples local confections and suggests how students can take advantage of these iconic desserts.
With my clothes smoky and stomach satiated from Korean barbecue, I ached for a delicate dessert in Koreatown. After my meaty lunch on Sunday, the lightness of SnowLA Shavery’s snow treat was the agreeable opposite.
SnowLA Shavery generates “snow,” which is like a mixture of ice cream and shaved ice because the dessert is produced not from a water-based, but a milk-based, frozen block. Thin curls are shredded off the block into a cup, piling snow in shaved folds like an airy ice cream.
SnowLA Shavery’s aura signaled that it’s a trendy store that appeals to younger customers. The window display spotlighted little succulent plants perched on an old-fashioned ice cream cart. Inside, expanses of murals consumed the walls. On the right, a giant photo collage paid tribute to Los Angeles with its mostly black and white photographs of In-N-Out Burger’s iconic paper cup, palm trees and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Urban Light exhibit. On the left, a painted abstract mural presumably depicted overlapping city blocks of bright colors. This decor created an artsy, modern atmosphere.
Beyond the hip style, SnowLA Shavery is practical, functioning like frozen yogurt venues where customers customize their snow by choosing a snow flavor, adorning the fluffy treat with hand-selected toppings, weighing the masterpiece and paying $0.51 per ounce.
To begin, three sizes of snow are offered: mini, regular and large, although the mini is plenty to satisfy one person. However, I chose regular because customers receive two flavors of snow in the two larger sizes, and I wanted to maximize the number of flavors I tried.
Flavors range from the sweeter strawberry and toffee coffee – gentler versions of their ice cream counterparts – to more earthy flavors such as horchata and green tea. The store also offers vegan flavors confected from almond or soy milk, like butterscotch caramel.
My gauzy combo embraced taro and black sesame snow, the latter of which is a popular choice. As for toppings, I loaded my taro half with mochi and red bean, two sweet and chewy specialties; my black sesame side was completed with strawberries and Oreos per an employee’s recommendation. To finish my creation, I drizzled a white rain of condensed milk, a sauce that doesn’t first appear to alter the confection but in fact pleasantly adds creamy textures and gooey sugar.
The black sesame has an ineffable taste; unlike white sesame found in broths and sauces, black sesame is more analogous to black tea with hints of pepper and nuttiness. It was fascinatingly good but almost savory as opposed to sweet. I found that the strawberry and Oreo toppings, though individually delicious, were disproportionately large to eat all together, meaning I did not get the full flavor profile with SnowLA Shavery’s signature black sesame.
I was keen on the taro flavor, which was much sweeter with a warm taste like toasted marshmallow. Taro is a root vegetable, here embodied in a shredded sculpture of light purple snowflakes. Mochi, my preferred topping on frozen confections, did not disappoint – I relished in its chewy and bland contrast to a flavorful and flimsy icy dessert. The red beans were pleasantly sweet atop my snow, but some might find the texture of the beans’ skin to be unsettling.
Eventually, I became accustomed to my snow’s flavors. Initially they had tasted potent, but after a while I merely tasted mellow hints. However, when I switched from black sesame to taro, the snow was strong and discernible again. I was personally satisfied with the lighter, acclimated flavors, but if customers want to continually surprise their tongue with a punch, they can rotate flavors with friends.
Established in 2013, SnowLA Shavery is a chic snow store that supplies the ideal light dessert to complement a heavy meal, proving that snow does belong in Southern California. Between the vintage-style photo collage and beautiful, wavy shaved snow, it’s certainly an artsy shop for designing a creative synthesis of frozen flavors and toppings.
– Lindsay Weinberg
How would you customize your shaved snow treat? Email Weinberg at lweinberg@media.ucla.edu.