The Balcony Grill & Bar

2710 Alton Pkwy
Ste 215
Irvine, CA 92606
(949) 387-0888
www.thebalconygrill.com

The Balcony is a Taiwanese restaurant/bar located in the popular Jamboree plaza that houses 85 C Bakery, Guppy House, Kula Sushi and many other food spots.

I visited The Balcony once (you can read the post and see the menu here) but I wasn’t particularly impressed. However, the one thing that I liked was that it serves snow shaved ice. With only a few spots serving snowflake shaved ice, The Balcony is the closest location to San Diego that serves it. For those who have not experienced snowflake shaved ice, blocks of ice with condensed milk are frozen and shaved into thin sheets, using a special machine, producing a very fine shaved ice that tastes almost like ice cream rather than ice.  It is a Taiwanese style of shaved ice that has become very popular in the last few years.

So on my last trip to the O.C. area, I stopped by The Balcony in the hopes of satisfying by cravings for snowflake shaved ice.

We decided to order some pineapple fried rice so we would have something salty to go with the sweet ice. I wasn’t very impressed with the pineapple rice. There was some curry powder flavoring the rice and some shredded dried pork on top.

For the ice, we chose the mango and condensed milk one.

For some reason the ice here is not nearly as good as the ones served in LA. The ice isn’t as fine, and isn’t very sweet. It looked right but it didn’t taste right. I left not feeling satisfied at all. I guess next time I’ll have to make the drive to Rowland Heights or San Gabriel Valley for some real snowflake shaved ice.