[FOOD REVIEW] Aqua S Ice Cream Parlor, CBD

Since I'll be going back to uni tomorrow, I thought I'd at least post about this before I sleep! I'm a bit nervous to go back to uni anyway so I probably won't be sleeping much haha. And thinking about ice cream might make me feel better about it :p

On to the ice cream! If you haven't noticed, Aqua S (Regent Place, 501 George St) has been all the buzz on Instagram and at any time I talk about ice cream with someone. I tried it on two different occasions to check out the new flavours and thus the salted dark chocolate flavour is unfortunately not available anymore :( but sea salt will always be there!

The best thing about this place is that it's really close to Town Hall station. It's opposite another popular place called Chanoma Cafe. Although others have talked about long lines here, I've been lucky to miss them on both occasions. It's probably because I go at times like 5 and 7 on weekdays when everyone either wants to go home or eat dinner haha. It's important to know that there's not much seating here, there were only like 3 or 4 tables and they're usually occupied. I'd say waiting in line, ordering and waiting for my ice cream took around 5-10 minutes max. Relatively fast.

You can choose between a waffle cone or cup but ice cream always feels incomplete without the cone and so I opted for the cone! In the above, I got the Sea Salt w/ Salted Dark Chocolate Cone + grilled marshmallow ($5.30).  The ice cream cone costed $3.80 and an extra $1.50 for each topping which includes grilled marshmallows, popping candy and fairy floss. I really just wanted to try the ice cream so I didn't want anything fancy. The grilled marshmallow was okay, it was really soft but not really worth the price for me.

As for the ice cream, I was actually surprised at how creamy it was! Although the salted dark chocolate flavour isn't available anymore, it tasted exactly how I would expect it to taste like. It had a very rich dark chocolate taste but I think the combination of sea salt with it made it really salty! By the end of it, all I could taste was salty creamy ice cream. The ice cream has that nice whipped cream sort of texture and is definitely filling! I actually liked the sea salt flavour, it was very interesting, salty but refreshing at the same time. I liked the cone too, it has a hint of chocolate flavour and is nice and crunchy! Oh and for all the photo takers, beware! This ice cream melts extremely fast! My friend took this one photo and it already started melting haha! By the time I walked out of the shop, I was already furiously licking it to save my hands.

And now on to the Chinese New Year flavours! These will be only available for two weeks (probably only 1 week and a bit by the time I post this) since they change flavours every two weeks to keep things interesting for everyone. This time around, they have the Taro and Mandarin flavour available in a combo with the sea salt flavour! I really wanted to try both so I grabbed my sister and made her get the mandarin flavour hehe. (She took the photo as well :D) To my surprise, I liked the mandarin combo with sea salt much better than taro. Alhough taro really did have the taste of taro, But I think the sweetness of it overwhelmed the taro taste a bit. It was extremely sweet when eaten along with the sea salt flavour. It probably didn't help that the other was salty and in turn made the taro taste even sweeter. I think the taro and sea salt flavours are both very dominant and so I didn't really like this super creamy combo but I think individually, taro would've tasted pretty good. It's as creamy as the sea salt flavour.

On the other hand, I thought the mandarin flavour was on point! It really tasted like a mandarin! It tasted like a fresh and ripe mandarin that has lots of juice and is sweet and refreshing at the same time. The mandarin flavour was extremely refreshing actually! I'd definitely recommend giving this a try if you like mandarins. In addition, when accompanied with the sea salt flavour, it gives your tongue a nice break from the saltiness and even after finishing it, you wouldn't feel too overwhelmed by all that ice cream you devoured.

Overall, I think this place is definitely worth a try if you're into soft serve-like ice cream that is really creamy and packed with flavour. Only down side would be how quickly it starts melting, it never fails to get on to my tissue and hands! Not sure if it's worth all the hype that's going on but I'd say I liked it and wouldn't mind going again to try other different flavours in the future.