That’s That Iced Espresso
Where to get icy, caffeinated desserts inspired by the sounds of summer (and, briefly, the nature of pop ephemera).
When I was planning my newsletters for the summer, I knew I wanted to make a list of shaved ice desserts in the city. This was right after I had returned from Japan and I was curious to see if there was anything locally that could live up to the kakigōri I ate in Tokyo (the answer is almost, and paid subscribers can see where below).
Around that time, Sabrina Carpenter’s Gov Ball performance of her song Espresso was all over my For You page on TikTok. So, I thought it would be cute to put the two together and see if there were enough places with icy coffee desserts to make a list inspired by the earworm du jour.
It looks like I wasn’t alone in drawing inspiration from the viral pop charts. That said, I’m not writing about iced coffee nor is this a deep dive into the world of coffee-plus-cream derivatives (that’s you, affogato). It’s a curation of ice desserts (and frozen drinks that may as well be dessert) that are in some way flavored with coffee. Things like shaved ice and granita, though I wasn’t able to find much granita, which seems like a real gap in the marketplace?
Anyway, as I combed through menus and ate through mountains of frozen water, the music of the moment started to shift, at least it did in the digital ecosystem I’ve algorithmically built for myself. It moved swiftly through Carpenter’s Espresso, her breathy rendition of Please Please Please, and then into a boisterous Chappell Roan interlude. It landed briefly on Birds of a Feather by Billie Eilish and now seems to have settled, for the time being, on Charli xcx’s big Brat energy.
I know that these songs are all still extremely popular and collectively they still make up the sounds of the summer, but just enough time has passed that listening to Espresso feels almost nostalgic. Back in May, when Carpenter sang it live on SNL, Biden was still running for a second term, college students were camped out in protest of the war on Gaza, and we were all making candy salads. Doesn’t that feel like ages ago? While not exactly stale, humming Espresso lacks the same cultural currency as seeing someone break into the Apple dance in public and knowing all the moves.
Besides, after Carpenter’s coffee ice cream collaboration with Van Leeuwen came out and then seeing her sipping an espresso in a commercial for the Paris Olympics, it all felt a bit like the song and the moment had sold out and cashed in. There’s nothing wrong with the sponsored content, I just think the eye of the pop culture storm has moved on.
In music, pop of course stands for popular and what’s “in” moves about as quickly as the line for lox at Russ & Daughters, which is to say, it moves fast. It is a bit alarming to me just how quickly meme culture is churning through insider-y jokes and catchy, ten second soundbites. According to psychologist Gloria Mark, our ability to focus on one screen, a proxy measurement for our attention span, has declined to an average of 47 seconds. If that’s really true, how much more content is necessary to fill a five-minute timespan these days? That used to be one good Coldplay song. Now it’s 12 snippets of this.
Don’t get me wrong, I love that budots meme, but if this trend of endless novelty and its ensuing culture of ephemera keeps trending, we’re on a slippery slope to…what? Blink-to-scroll content? How much more consumable media do we need to make in order to get through one month? One year? As someone who is effectively trying to earn a living off the attention economy, or the idea that (y)our finite attention is now the most valuable asset on the market, I’m tired just thinking of all that content and the work required to sustain, promote, and break through.
If a pendulum swing back to longform is in motion, if underconsumption core is truly headed our way, I hope it all gets here soon.
But back to shaved ice. Even though Espresso wasn’t on everyone’s lips quite as much, I realized my ice and espresso shtick could still work. Pop music is fickle and there isn’t a better parallel for that kind of ephemerality than frozen water. I mean, what is more fleeting than ice?
Ice is the original ‘here one moment, gone the next’ commodity. Its historical position as rare and elusive in some parts of the world also makes it one of the earliest luxury goods. Much has been written about this, but the story I grew up with is that in the 16th century, ice and snow was sent from the Himalayas to the royal Mughal courts for chilling drinks and desserts. This expensive treat was a precursor to the South Asian condensed milk ice cream known as kulfi.
Refrigeration made ice more accessible, but in fits and starts. I recently read a note on Substack about the colonial-era ice houses in India, something the British seemed to have established across their territories. It reminded me of Ice House Street in Hong Kong, named after the ice storage facilities where expatriated colonists could get fresh, cold milk. It wasn’t until the mid-1900s that refrigeration technology was cheap enough to own at home.
Ice may be as accessible as water and refrigeration are today, and still far more ordinary than it once was, but it’s no less susceptible to melting, as we are well aware of in our warming climate. And, relatedly, it’s just as refreshing in hotter weather. Which is probably why so many versions of shaved ice exist around the world. The ones I hear about the most here in New York are kakigōri from Japan and, recently, bingsoo from South Korea. But there’s also shave ice from Hawaii, ais kacang from Malaysia, and ice gola or gola ganda from South Asia. They’re all variations of the same thing — ice, syrup, and sometimes toppings. (Most shaved ice is made from frozen water, but Korean bingsoo is often milk-based.)
In a Japanese text from roughly 1,000 years ago, kakigōri was referred to as a “refined and elegant thing,” which I think is absolutely correct. At its best, the dessert’s fine crystals and natural fruit flavors are indeed refined and elegant. Today, kakigōri in Japan, like most things in Japan, has reached an art form. Appreciating this art requires some knowledge of intricacies like the exact nature of the frozen water and the compactness of the ice, but not always.
I was lucky enough to try one of the better kakigōri spots on our last day in Tokyo, at a place called Chap. The texture of the ice was indeed ethereally light, weightless on the tongue but chilling nonetheless. But during our trip, we also had street fair kakigōri outside a flea market in Osaka with big, rough chunks; and perfectly average mall kakigōri with a simple strawberry syrup; and then there was a fluffy but bittersweet matcha kakigōri from a teahouse in Nara. At the end of it all, every version had its own distinction, the thing that made it special, whether that was the precision of the ice flake or just the mood of being on vacation with my family.
And this is where I keep finding myself, after so many essays exploring the significance of dessert: in the domain of pleasure, or happiness. I would argue that music puts us in our feelings, too, so maybe the temporary physical relief shaved iced provides in the throes of summer mimics the psychological relief of listening to a new bop, a charming but short-lived pop song that was written specifically to lift your spirits, to get caught up in your inner ear.
Like virality, or novelty, the quest for happiness is eternal. It resets every day and, for me at least, it evolves with each passing year. Part of that is reconciling the fact that pop culture doesn’t cater to my generation as much, I’m aging out of influence. Part of that is also seeing the world grow warmer, more hostile to life, and wondering what kind of future is in store for my daughter’s generation. Pop music, ice desserts, it’s all just a momentary reprieve from the labors of existing.
I’d say it’s time for dessert, no?
Some caveats first: Most of the shaved ice spots on this list also offer a variety of seasonal and fruit-forward flavors, so if coffee isn’t quite your thing you can always try the alternative. You can also take some of these iced, to go (yes, that was a Hot To Go! reference). And lastly, there are two honorable mentions for matcha kakigōri — similar caffeine kick, but not quite that espresso.
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