Kanzi Fashion Cafe is a Korean cafe that occupies half the retail space not occupied by the Korean clothing store. Browsing or an interest in clothing isn’t necessary to enjoy or even access the cafe, as the two are separated by a brick wall although each can be seen from the other through windows.
As I’ve come to expect from Korean cafes, its furnished with somewhat organised unmatched furniture. So all the chairs at a table will match, but not with the chairs at another table. A visit around noon left us spoiled for choice, but the cafe steadily filled up with couples and funnily enough, people doing business.
N and I were first here for the Honeydew Melon Bingsu ($18.80). It’s half a honeydew melon. The flesh has been globed. A melon-flavoured ice cream bar and shaved ice fills the resulting cavity. The globes of honey dew are packed onto the surface of the shaved ice. The whole thing is topped with two scoops of vanilla ice cream.
The bingsu was quite impressive. The honeydew melon was a decent size, and tasted fresh, sweet and firm but not overly ripe. The shaved ice was flavoured with condensed milk with a fluffy texture, although it still had visible water crystals so wasn’t creamy to taste. The melon-flavoured ice cream bar was deliciously melon-y as expected (it’s the same as the melona bars you find in Korean grocery stores). Really, the only thing I’d change about this dessert is to replace the vanilla ice cream with scoops of melon-flavoured ice cream. Of course, melon-flavoured ice cream doesn’t come in tubs, and the creamy white of vanilla ice cream makes for prettier presentation (rather than all green).
They also offer rockmelon, as well other chocolate, red bean, or chopped fruit bingsu for the same price. The honeydew and rockmelon bingsu seemed to be the best ‘value’ for money in that the fruit was guaranteed to be decent and fresh (not canned).
We later went back to try their drinks: Watermelon Slushie ($6.50) and Mojito Slushie ($6.50). Both drinks are made with fresh fruit, so there’s none of the artificial flavour tastes that you get from elsewhere. The watermelon tastes like blended frozen watermelon, while the mojito slushie has tastes like fresh limes blended with ice and lime zest. The only downside to them using fresh limes in the mojito slushie is the bits of pith that end up in the drink. It’s something I can do without, but it does add texture to the drink, so it’s forgivable.
Gelato and ice cream options abound at the southern end of the City, but decent cake is harder to find. We’d eyed the cakes at Kanzi Fashion Cafe during our previous visits for drinks, but were always full from lunch to want to fill up on cake that didn’t beckon us visually. For late afternoon tea with T and N on a busy afternoon, though, it was a most convenient option.
This is the Green Forest Cake ($7.50). It consisted of layers of green tea sponge sandwiching green tea cream that’s with azuki bean throughout, topped with white chocolate shavings and drizzles of raspberry and kiwi syrup.
The sponge was light and fluffy, which is characteristic of Asian sponge cakes. As with Korean takes at green tea flavoured food, the green tea flavour was absent. It seems to happen because they use actual brewed green tea rather than matcha to flavour the food, which results in it lacking the strong green tea flavour and bright green colour found in Japanese green tea flavoured foods. What’s left is a sweet cake that’s super pale green (food colouring?). While the green tea flavour was lacking, the cake itself was enjoyable to eat even if it wasn’t amazing.
The drizzles of raspberry and kiwi syrup were a bit random – how do those flavours tie in with the cake?! – but otherwise very tasty! Especially the kiwi.
This time I tried the Mojito ($6.50) as an iced drink rather than as a slushie. I much prefer this version as it has the same flavour as the slushie, which I love, and without the chunks of pith, which I dislike.
While the cakes at Kanzi Fashion Cafe aren’t amazing, they’re not entirely bad. Their drinks, though, are great!
Kanzi Fashion Cafe is located at 393-399 Sussex St, Haymarket NSW 2000.