Pishon Patisserie is a semi-hipster Korean cafe servings cakes and drinks on the Korean side of Eastwood. There’s the shop space downstairs and seating on the second floor. We’re here because a recent look at their online menu showed a cake inspired by the much loved Strawberry Watermelon Cake at Blackedtar Pastry.
The cake we were after was the Mini Rose Watermelon Cake, is described as a ‘dacquoise with rose cream, watermelon and seasonal fruits’.
It’s only fair that I ate the cake without comparing it to Blackedtar Pastry’s cake. That said, it wasn’t a terribly impressive cake. Perhaps it was the evening, and so the cake had been sitting for most of the day, but the dacquoise was not crisp and had the texture, appearance and taste of white bread. A dacquoise is made of hazelnut/almond, but here, it had none of the nuttiness. The rose cream was not fragrant and tasted like unflavoured whipped cream. Any hint of rose came from the rose petal garnish. The watermelon was decent, but it doesn’t make the cake – it’s everything else!
D has never really one for ‘light’ desserts, so went for the chocolate tart. He seemed to enjoy it, though I found the tart case was far too moist. Coupled with the thick chocolate filling that was goopy like chocolate mousse (rather than firm as in typical chocolate tarts), each bite from the tart stuck to the back of my throat in a cloying unpleasant way.
Japanese shaved ice (kakigōri) seems to not exist in Sydney. It’s different from the shaved ice from Taiwanese or Chinese dessert places, as well as Korean shaved ice (bingsu). In my desperation, I looked into bingsu, and in stark contrast to kakigōri, there’s a concentration of them in suburbs with an established Korean community as well as elsewhere.
For all the reading I did on bingsu, it was only recently that I got around to trying one from Pishon Patisserie, with vanilla ice cream, red bean, mochi, chopped fruit, and cornflakes ($13.00). It’s a rather large serving to be shared. The shaved ice is more like crushed ice crystals than the actual shavings of ice you see in kakigōri, but it’s still fluffy unlike the rock hard shaved ice from Din Tai Fung.
The shaved ice was flavoured with condensed milk and watermelon syrup (the same artificial, but pleasant taste of watermelon candy) that gave it just enough sweetness. Some nutty tasting crystals also in the shaved ice gave it a nice crunchy texture. As for the toppings, there was a generous amount of red bean and mochi (a bit soft, could be chewier) – I would’ve been satisfied with just these toppings. I’m not a fan of canned fruit in desserts, especially when fresh fruit is readily available.
Bingsu is not as amazing as the kakigōri in Japan, but it’s an enjoyable form of shaved ice in Sydney.
N and I were also looking forward to trying their Passionfruit Earl Grey. That wasn’t available, so I settled on the pink lemonade, which was essentially strawberry syrup in lemonade. For $6.10, it was ridiculously over priced and too sweet.
It’s disappointing that my first visit left a more positive impression than my subsequent visit.
Pishon Patisserie is located at 1/77 Rowe Street, Eastwood NSW 2122.