The sight of fresh ripe yellow mangoes is a tell-tale sign of summer — and with the mercury rising in New West, it's no surprise that the tropical summer fruit has made its way onto local restaurant menus and supermarkets.
New West’s Fruiticana grocery store has stocked up on Mexican-imported mangoes, and some eateries are now offering mango cakes, mango shakes and mango sticky rice. These menu items, like barbecue nights and sundresses, will stay till the end of summer.
Which means it's a short window to explore a long list of mango recipes: do we have them sliced, pulped or blended with milk? Topped on sticky rice, on a cup of bingsoo or a glass of green tea?
Scroll down this list to see your options in New West:
Mango cake at Take the Cake
A Queensborough bakery's response to warm weather is a cool mango coconut cake. Take the Cake first posted photos of its new menu item — a cake topped with fresh slices of mango, glazed and arranged in concentric circles — in March. Ever since they introduced it, as per the bakery’s social media post, it's been a top-seller.
This is not the first time the bakery has been leaning on mangoes to perk up its summer offerings. Last summer, the eatery's menu flaunted a mango cheesecake. Now, a year later, Take the Cake brings back the mango madness to its store with its new mango coconut cake — available as whole or by the slice.
Take the Cake is located at 1110 Ewen Ave.
Aamb Raas at Vada Pav Mirchi
Handmade mango pulp juice aka aamb raas (in Marathi, a language spoken in the state of Maharashtra, India) is the latest offering at the fledgling takeout eatery Vada Pav Mirchi.
Popular for its Indian street food vada pav — spicy potato patties stuffed between buttered buns — the mother-daughter run business introduced aamb raas as part of the Hindu and Jain spring festival, Akshaya Tritiya, in mid-April.
The mango juice was part of a larger ensemble that included Indian bread, kanda bhaji (crunchy fried onion fritters) and spiced potatoes. Though planned to be a one-day offering only, seeing the overwhelming response from customers, the eatery not only decided to offer the item for the entire mango season, but also expanded its mango offerings with an all-new mango shake.
Vada Pav Mirchi is located at 1122 Fifth Ave.
Mango bingsoo at Snowy Villages
When the temperatures get sizzling outside, wrap your hands around the traditional Korean shaved-ice melt-in-the-mouth mango bingsoo.
Though traditionally featuring boiled red beans, sticky rice cakes and dried fruit as toppings — as per Koreana, a quarterly magazine on Korean Culture and Arts — the sweet dish is now available in many new avatars. New West’s Korean dessert shop Snowy Village has on its menu bingsoo flavours such as Oreo cookie crumbs, green tea, cheesecake and more.
The modest mango bingsoo, however, is one of the most “popular” items in the expansive list, as per Snowy Village's website. The “healthy and fresh” dessert is made with fresh whipped cream, sweetened condensed milk and 100 per cent real mangoes as toppings — making it probably the sweetest way to beat the heat.
Snowy Village is located at Shops at New West at New Westminster SkyTrain Station, 800 Carnarvon St.
Mango juice at Booster Juice
Mangoes with spinach? Mangoes with kale? For health nuts among you, those are two options to consume the nutrients- and fibre-rich fruit.
Booster Juice's spinach smoothie includes mangoes, apples and acai; their kale-based drink contains a mix of mangoes, bananas, apples and pineapple. But if you are looking for a drink where mango is the star ingredient, then try the juice shop’s featured booster tea blend Mango Magic, which has floating pieces of mango in a freshly-steeped green tea and pineapple juice blend.
While you are there, also give their mango-based yogurt drinks a try — the mango hurricane is a heady mix of mangoes, strawberries, passion fruit and guava; the mangosicle is a mish-mash of pineapple, vanilla and mangoes.
Booster Juice is located at the Royal Square Mall, 800 McBride Blvd.
Sticky mango rice cake at Patsara
Yet another way to relish mangoes is to have them alongside sweet sticky rice. This traditional Southeast Asian and South Asian dessert is made with just three ingredients: rice, coconut milk and mangoes. The cooked rice is added with a sweet and salty coconut milk base and left to sit for a while until the flavours commingle. Once soft and creamy, it's served with peeled and sliced mangoes.
As explained in the The Pepper Thai Cookbook, the sweet sticky mango rice is a common sweet dish in Thailand — sold in banana leaf packages by vendors on bicycles. But lucky for us, this popular Thai food item can be enjoyed in New West. At Patsara Thai restaurant, the sticky rice dessert is a seasonal menu item that ironically doesn't stick around post summer.
Patsara is located at 528 Carnarvon St.
