Like this:

On Kinau, just past The Queen’s Medical Center professional buildings, a cute pink standalone building beckons.  It’s Shiga’licious Shave Ice & Sweet Shop, which has been in business for the last 2-3 years. There’s a couple of off-street parking spots, and the lady who greets us seems surprised, but helpful, to see customers. Not exactly a great sign. Maybe it was the wheelchair. -CF

It's not all about how you look.

Any way, we get to ordering and choose POG – passion orange guava – and plain passion fruit on the other. There’s a one-size bowl for $2.50, and you can order it with azuki or ice cream. We take it plain, but begin to think maybe we should have jazzed it up, but our criteria for great shave ice is just that: more ice, less other stuff. If you make the shave ice well, the other stuff shouldn’t add or detract from the final product, unless you use soft serve ice cream or really, really, really bad azuki beans.

Our shave ice looked good; tasted, uh, good for a hot day. That’s no compliment. The syrups have that unmistakable taste of commercially-made syrup, and not the good kind. The flavor list is small and uninspired. Equally as important as the syrup, the quality of the ice was poor. It was hard, and quickly became watery and icy.

Passion-orange-guava with plain lilikoi.

Did I say the building was nice? It has that freshly painted look. Clean. Orderly counters. Could benefit from a strong fan or A/C to move the air inside. We didn’t try the Hole-E-Cow polish dogs in a sweet bread bun, which may be just the thing to keep Shiga’licious in business, because it’s not the shave ice.

Rating: 2 cones

Shiga’licious Shave Ice & Sweet Shop

Kinau Street (Diamond Head side of Alapai St.)

Honolulu, HI  96813

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