First Look: It’s Bluebird Days Only at Kakigori Kaiji, Haymarket’s New Specialty Shaved-Ice Stop

This Sussex Street spot guarantees more bluebird days – blue skies, fresh powder – than any ski town.

On the edge of Chinatown, bricks of ice from Japan’s Ishikawa prefecture are shaved into piles of fluffy snow. House-made syrups are poured on top, then the bowls are crowned with a sweet spoonful of adzuki (red beans) or foamed condensed milk. It’s Kakigori Kaiji, a new space dedicated to the mountainous Japanese dessert, run by Miho Wakatsuki and her husband.

When the pair set out, they knew they wanted the best ice on the market: Kuramoto.

“[For really good kakigori], you need the ice to be a specific type,” Wakatsuki tells Broadsheet. “It’s absolutely clear. There’s no oxygen, there’s no minerals, there’s no impurities. It’s just pure water. It’s rock hard. That’s how you get it at a really fine shave, which is how you get that fluffiness.”

Kuramoto is the oldest ice manufacturer in Kanazawa, Japan, and it services top bars and restaurants with glassy blocks – much like our own Bare Bones Ice Co. Over two days, pure water from Japan’s Mount Haku is agitated while slowly being frozen at -10 degrees Celsius. The result? Clear, slow-melt and very pretty ice. And when big bricks are hand shaved in kakigori houses, you end up with a pile of creamy – yes, creamy – ice.

That special ice has taken a roundabout route to get to Sydney. Melbourne chef Hiroshi Kawamata, of Sebastian Kakigori, was the first to use Kuramoto’s ice Down Under. After closing his Tokyo kakigori house, he relocated to Melbourne. When Wakatsuki contacted the Japanese ice makers, they were in the final stages of signing an import deal with Kawamata and encouraged her to reach out to him. So now Kawamata imports it, and the Kaiji team buys it from him. Currently, they’re the only venue in Sydney to do so.

At Kakigori Kaiji, the ice is manually shaved before one of five flavours is poured on top. The uji-kintoki is the top seller: bright-green syrup made with Aussie-grown matcha is layered with red, syrupy adzuki (plus condensed milk too if you fancy). There’s a strawberry option, with a crown of frothed-up condensed milk, and a summer-ready lemon and honey serve.

Joining the dessert are a few hot drinks (hojicha, sencha and matcha) plus a yuzu soda. The after-dinner rush is the busiest, with a line forming up the street while staff whirl the blocks of ice in the window. The opening hours will shift with daylight savings and the return of warmer weather.

“There’s a lot of different iced Asian desserts in Chinatown. You can have the Thai shaved ice, the Korean-style bingsu,” Wakatsuki says. Kawamata himself helped create Kaji’s classically Japanese menu.

Kakigori Kaiji’s arrival fits into a multicultural wave of icy new Sydney openings, joining Filipino Mix Mix Co for halo-halo in Rooty Hill and Pep’s Italian Ice in Earlwood, which opened over the weekend.

Kakigori Kaiji
394 Sussex Street, Sydney

Hours:
Mon to Thu 3pm–10pm
Fri to Sun 1pm–10pm

kakigorikaiji.com.au
@kakigorikaiji