photo by Nick Seo
From a press release:
“The dessert of the summer has been anointed: Tonari’s kakigori, the delicate, cooling shaved ice treat that is as refreshing as it is artful.
Requiring a specific machine to create lacy sheets of ice, kakigori is an artisanal dessert by design. Tonari sources specific blocks of pristine ice from Japan by the Kuramoto Ice Company. Because ice is the main ingredient, the emphasis is in buying a quality block.
Kuramoto slowly freezes the ice, layer by layer over 72 hours, to achieve a certain level of purity and clarity. Needing to be tempered—Tonari exposes the ice blocks to a warmer temperature for periods of time before shaving the cube on the machine—the result is fluffy and airy. This is one of the critical techniques in making kakigori: If the ice block is too cold, the ice becomes more brittle. Instead, imagine kakigori is the iced version of cotton candy.
Tonari’s kakigori flavors include: strawberry (ichigo), green tea (matcha), coffee, watermelon and wafu Italian ice, which is flavored with lemon and Calpico syrups. The syrups feature fresh seasonal fruits and dairy bases.
“We need to break peoples’ impression of what shaved ice is,” says Katsuya Fukushima, the chef and co-owner of Tonari and Daikaya Group, and the visionary behind Tonari’s version of the icy treat.
Kakigori is unlike American-style shaved ice, which he says, are usually crunchy and flavored with artificial colors and syrups. Instead, kakigori showcases the beauty and simplicity of its sparse ingredient list: the ice and the fresh syrups and sauces.
“If anyone has put maple syrup on fresh snow, they will understand how special kakigori is,” says Fukushima, underlining the minimalist approach to ingredients in kakigori. Famous for boosting authentic Japanese ramen culture in D.C., Fukushima is at it again with kakigori: “I am endeavoring to make kakigori another Japanese staple, share it here locally and do it right. I’m still learning. It’s way beyond flavored ice.”
Because of the sensitivity of the ice and the hands-on nature of creating each bowl of kakigori, it is only available at Tonari Cafe, Saturday and Sundays, between 1 – 2:30 p.m. // 707 6th St., NW“