Glacier Hong
Written and photographed by Sarah Pittman
If you are a new arrival to Korea, sometimes walking through Gwangju’s downtown area can make you feel like Alice in Wonderland: not sure where you are and not sure how to get back to where you were. However, if you can find your way around, down a street behind the Megabox theater is a little ice-cream shop serving up sweet treats that a certain pink and blue mega-chain cannot even compare to.
The name of the shop is Glacier Hong. It is a small shop. There are two tables on either side of the display case and a quartet of seats facing the window bar. Since opening its doors in 2016, it has offered an ever-changing range of quality handmade flavors from the everyday to the unexpected. Be they as common as vanilla or Oreo, or as exotic as Jack Daniels, Valrhona chocolate, tiramisu, or Marco Polo black tea, owner Hong Ji-yeong’s flavors are always phenomenal. Glacier Hong makes non-dairy sorbets, too, such as strawberry or lemon ginger. The flavors offered change with the seasons, so the shop depends a lot on social media like Instagram to advertise the ice cream du jour. Glacier Hong also only makes two batches of each specialty flavor, so if you are in love with a flavor, get it while it is cold!
On the Saturday afternoon when I visited, I tried the strawberry and lemon-ginger sorbets, the hazelnut-Valrhona chocolate, and the Marco Polo black tea ice creams. The Marco Polo black tea was sweet and milky, and reminded me of a quintessential pearl tea flavor. The sugar’s sweetness and the tea’s bitterness acted in perfect harmony, and it finished on a note of lightly toasted caramel. The texture throughout was rich and wonderful, with an unmistakable fatty-milk quality that is impossible to fake.
My next love was the fresh and natural strawberry sorbet. It did not have the jammy, fructose flavor that many commercial sorbets have. It was delightfully smooth, more like a gelato than a sorbet. Then came the lemon-ginger sorbet and the hazelnut-Valrhona chocolate ice cream. The lemon-ginger reminded me of the Italian ice cups from my childhood: sweet lemon with a refreshing icy texture. I could taste the ginger after the lemon, but the lemon definitely upstaged the ginger. The hazelnut Valrhona started with a beautifully clean nut flavor that holds its own against the rich dark chocolate. Unlike many of its competitors, Glacier Hong takes a delicate approach to sugar in its chocolate flavors, so the depth of the French cacao is not lost in a syrupy aftertaste but instead lingers on the tongue.
Glacier Hong’s prices per scoop range from 3,000 to 4,600 won. It also offers a “Family Box” option, where you can pick four flavors to take home for 21,000 won. Overall, Glacier Hong is a fantastic place for a date or catching up with your friends over a masterfully crafted serving of local ice cream.
Glacier Hong 글라시에홍
12-24 Seoseok-ro 7-beongil, Dong-gu, Gwangju
광주 광역시 동구 서석로 7번길12-24
010-9497-2107 Everyday 12:00–22:00
The Author
Sarah Pittman is a 26-year-old English hagwon teacher and a southern California native. She loves photography, swing dancing, the color teal, and her dog Cosmo. When she goes back to America, she hopes to either continue teaching or work in an office that allows dogs.