Return of Hong Kong's Bing Sut

Bing Sut Bingo

“What’s in a name?” asks Paul Hon Man-por. He owns Pak Lee Café (216 Shau Kei Wan Rd., Sai Wan Ho, 2560-5214), one of the few original bing suts left in the city. Literally “ice chambers,” bing suts originated in the 60s as downmarket cafés. “In the 70s, I was ashamed to say that my family ran a bing sut,” says Hon. “I’d rather tell people that we ran a cha chaan teng. It felt more respectable.” But these days, ice chambers are the cha chaan teng’s far cooler brother, and they’re back in a big way.

The name is said to come from the days when few could afford home air-conditioning. An “ice chamber” was a place for people to cool down with desserts like shaved ice—or maybe just a place to enjoy a bit of air-con. Just as how cafés nowadays attract customers with free Wi-Fi, bing suts proudly advertised their newly installed cooling facilities with the words “fully air-conditioned” stuck to their doors. “People came in for some creature comforts during the dog days of summer,” Hon reminisces. “In the past, the ice was shaved manually on a wooden bench with a saw. It was hard work, even after the introduction of an ice-shaving machine, which you used by turning a handle. When I was a kid, I shaved more than 100 pounds of ice a day.”

Bing suts may have gotten their name from their shaved ice, but over the decades that’s fallen by the wayside. “When you think about it, there’s nothing special about shaved ice,” says Hon. “We haven’t served it for 20 years in the old bing sut, because people’s tastes have changed. You can find improved Taiwanese shaved ice in dessert shops.”

Back to the Future

But Paul Hon is unique in the bing sut business, because he straddles the divide between old and new. Hon’s father opened Pak Lee in 1964, and the son has just launched a new branch of the family business: Pak Lee Café Since 1964 (UG/F, The Pemberton, 22-26 Bonham Strand, Sheung Wan, 3575-9896). And yes, you do get ice in your ice chamber. “We sell shaved ice in the new bing sut, in order to create that feeling of being transported back in time.”

So there’s plenty of the past on offer. But there’s also a taste of the bing sut to come. Pak Lee’s menu may not have changed much—Hon and his family have served the same breakfast and lunch sets for almost half a century—but the opening of the new bing sut in Sheung Wan is an opportunity to try out some new approaches too.

Hon is revising his recipes because he realizes that this is the only way forward. “We can’t play by the same old rules and expect to survive,” he says. “It’s not blind nostalgia. People once considered it good food as long as you put loads of sugar in the dish, but that won’t work anymore. Nowadays, customers pay more attention to the quality of the ingredients.”

It’s just one of the ways bing suts are adapting to changing tastes and demands. Hon’s new bing sut isn’t simply a copy of the old one in Sai Wan Ho. There is a strong movie-oriented theme to the nostalgic décor—the entrance to the café is designed as a cinema vestibule and the walls are lined with cartoon renderings of local stars. “The environment has to be comfortable and clean, but you must retain the authentic 70s ambience,” explains Hon. “It’s a different kind of old: nostalgic old as opposed to worn-down old.”

The Icing on the Cake