Friday, August 28, 2009

Hawaiian Shave Ice...in Champaign, IL?

About a month ago, Aaron mentioned that he saw a Hawaiian Shave Ice van in Champaign and asked me if it was the real deal. I was a bit skeptical about the place because at the "Taste of Champaign" a couple of years ago, the "Hawaiian Shave Ice" was similar to the texture of the coarse ice in a "Snow-cone."
Aaron brought it up again and said that he tried it and the ice texture was similar to snow, rather than crushed ice. Here's a picture of a slightly melted cup of shave ice.
So last Saturday, one of my Hawaii friends (yeah, there are a few others from Hawaii who attend school in Illinois) and I finally checked out the shave ice van on Neil St. in Champaign, IL. She's posing next to the shave ice van.
The workers were super nice and friendly and there were TONS of flavors to choose from. We tried the mango and the banana cream pie flavors. We then unintentionally got the cups mixed up and told/convinced Aaron that the mango was the banana cream pie flavor. He even said, "Mmm...that banana cream pie is really good." Then he some how figured out that he was eating the mango one. So, those flavoring in particular could use a little tweaking, but our taste buds could have been shot because we had been cooking and tasting all the food for our "Grown-Up Kids Party."Overall take home message, the shave ice van gets my stamp of approval. It is not as soft as Matsumoto's shave ice or Waiola's, but it's the best I've tasted on the mainland and definitely similar to other shave ice stores in Hawaii. I'd definitely go back, but I would try other flavors. Maybe stick with one of the more traditional flavors like strawberry.

4 comments:

SinoSoul said...

Freaking random. I believe there is one Hawaiian restaurant in all of Chicago when we lived there for 3 years.

Kendell said...

oooo...yummy! we'll have to hit that up when I'm there at the end of the month!

genkitummy said...

SinoSoul-Thanks for visiting my blog. Yeah, Hawaii restaurants in the midwest are hard to find.

Kendell-sure, we'll definitely check it out although I think the overlap in our trips might be slim.

Lori said...

Glad you found a taste of home over there! I'm craving some shave ice now - didn't have any all summer!