芒果冰Mango Shaved Ice

The ice comes in two main styles. Traditional 剉冰 is block ice shaved into coarser, crisp crystals and dressed with syrup; 雪花冰, “snowflake ice,” is a block of frozen milk or flavored water shaved into thin, soft sheets that melt on the tongue. Either way, the mango is the point. In season, shops favor ripe Irwin (愛文) mangoes, along with Keitt (凱特) and Jinhuang (金煌), cut into big chunks and heaped on top. Mango sauce or puree adds depth, condensed milk goes over it, and some shops add a scoop of mango ice cream or sorbet.

Portions are usually large enough for two or more people, and many shops let you pick extras such as pudding, panna cotta, mochi or other fruit. The mango decides the quality of the bowl, so it is best eaten in season.

Taiwan's habit of eating ice is tied to the ice-making technology brought in under Japanese rule; a Ministry of Culture feature says the island's ice-fruit parlors (冰果室) have about a century of history. Mango arrived much earlier: it is generally said that the Dutch introduced it in the 17th century, and the local “native” mango was small, sour and fibrous, mostly made into preserves and pickles. The sweet, juicy Irwin (愛文) that dominates today was brought from Florida in 1954, and Cheng Han-chih of Yujing, Tainan, planted the first trees around 1962 and saw them fruit in 1965. Yujing is still known for mangoes, and the town has no shortage of shops selling mango ice.

Taipei's mango ice craze has one fairly well-documented chapter: the shop 冰館 (Bīngguǎn) on Yongkang Street. According to a 2001 Business Today report, Luo Tongyi, a former salesman for an imported-liquor agent, rented a roughly 5-ping (about 16 square meters) shop there around 1996 and opened an ice shop selling mixed sweet-bean ice, red-bean ice and shaved ice, no different from any other ice parlor, and lost more than NT$2 million in two years. In the last month before closing he kept only fresh mango shaved ice, and business took off; “it was mango ice that saved Bingguan,” the report says. It describes queues of 50 to 60 meters on ordinary days and more than 100 meters on holidays, and nearby shops copying the idea. Later reports back up the outline of that story: Business Today in 2010 and Mirror Media in 2019 both name the founder as Luo Junhua (born 1967, which matches the age of 34 given in 2001, so they appear to be the same man, though the reports give different names), place the shop on Yongkang Street, date its opening to the mid-to-late 1990s (Mirror Media says 1997), and describe a slow start with traditional ice that turned around once mango shaved ice joined the menu. According to Mirror Media the original shop closed without notice in 2010, and the founder launched the ICE MONSTER brand in 2012. Whether it was truly the first mango ice is not documented: ice-fruit parlors had always put seasonal fruit on ice, and it is hard to say who used mango first.