SomiSomi is a dessert shop in Los Angeles (which is expanding to San Diego soon) that specializes in taiyaki soft serve, also known as Ah-Boong in Korea. The beautiful dessert features fish-shaped waffle cones topped with soft serve ice cream.
I’ve been mesmerized by this dessert creation which first started filling my Instagram feed nearly a year ago. So I was very excited when a shop opened in Los Angeles. Ah-Boong is a popular dessert from Korea inspired by Japanese taiyaki, which are fish shaped waffles. The Korean version features a fish shaped cone, called boong-uh-bbang, which is then filled with a filling and topped with soft serve ice cream.
Somisomi is quite small and it was extremely crowded when we went so I didn’t take photos of the front.
To create your Ah-Boong, you first choose a filling: custard, red bean or Nutella. Then you choose an ice cream flavor. They have four single flavors available daily as well as two swirl options (there are four swirl combinations offered but only two are available each week).
You also get to choose toppings which are complimentary. You can have as many as you want, letting you design your perfect creation. I really love that they don’t charge for toppings.
Left: Ube & Milk swirl, Nutella filling, topped with macaron and sprinkles.
Right: Matcha & Black Sesame swirl, custard filling, topped with fruity pebbles and crushed Oreos.
The ice cream melted really fast so this was the only good picture I got. I was surprised at how mild the ube flavor was. For me, the milk overwhelmed the ube. I preferred the matcha and black sesame combination where both flavors really came through. In general, the soft serve was good but not necessarily the best. I would prefer a mix with a higher fat content for a richer ice cream. However, they were still lovely, creamy and enjoyable.
They probably wouldn’t have melted so fast if there was seating inside. But because the store is so small, we had to go outside to stand around and eat these and they immediately started melting once we went outside.
My favorite part was actually the cone itself. I thought it might just be gimmicky but the fresh-made cones were quite delicious. They were crispy on the outside and soft inside. I liked the custard filling the best.
Overall, we enjoyed the Ah-Boong here and I’m excited that they plan on expanding to San Diego soon (they announced it on Instagram a few weeks ago). While we do have dessert places in San Diego serving this, I think SomiSomi’s version is better.
SomiSomi
621 S Manhattan Pl #208-A, Los Angeles, CA 9000
https://www.somisomi.com/
