Fig snow bingsu after Simhaksan hike, then mango 1+1 revisit: Fruit

After a good meal at a Simhaksan restaurant, dessert always crosses your mind, haha😎 I was looking around for a Simhaksan café dessert spot when this place caught my eye purely on visuals — Fruit Forest. The look of figs completely wrapping around a bingsu is no joke, and while the shop is famous for its mango bingsu, I was too curious about the fig version, so I went with fig bingsu!

Fruit Forest Paju Direct Store

Parking and location — lot below the building, bingsu on the 2nd floor

There's a parking lot right under the building, so it was convenient to drive there, and the bingsu shop itself is on the 2nd floor.

Walk in and there's a mountain of mangoes

The first thing that caught my eye the moment I walked in was a literal mountain of mangoes!!! I thought I'd landed in Vietnam. I was genuinely shocked at how many mangoes were piled up, haha.

Both fridges on either side were packed with fruit — not just figs but pineapple, orange, watermelon and more. True to a fresh-fruit specialty shop, the variety was impressive.

Mangoes were sold at ₩8,000 each, and seeing the shop stacked full of them really made me feel why this place is famous for its mango bingsu 🥭

Seating — chairs and sofa seats

The interior was bigger than I expected, with both chair seating and sofa seats, so it was easy to settle in and enjoy dessert at a leisurely pace.

Nearly every other table was eating mango bingsu, which shook my resolve a little, but I'd been set on fig bingsu from the start — full steam ahead!!

What does fig actually taste like? The staff said "kind of like red ginseng"

Honestly I'd barely ever eaten fresh fig properly, so before ordering I asked a staff member what it tastes like — she said it's got a slight red ginseng-like note. Hearing that only made me more curious, and there was no way I wasn't ordering it now, haha, my curiosity was fully triggered.

Fig bingsu, ₩28,000

Wow... the visual was genuinely insane. It looked almost exactly like the photos — figs ringing the whole bowl of shaved ice, topped with honeycomb and blueberries. With that much fig piled on, just looking at it felt like properly eating fruit.

What I was most curious about that day was the fig flavor, and after one bite it was better than I expected! There was that faint red-ginseng-like note the staff mentioned, but maybe because I'd been warned ahead of time, it actually came across as charming rather than off-putting. I'm a complete fig convert now!

The shaved ice itself was soft and delicious, and there was fig purée mixed in throughout, so it never went bland by the end. The mild, subtle sweetness of the fig paired really well with the soft snow ice.

At first I wasn't sure I'd even like figs, but after eating this I somehow got genuinely into them 🤭 I only ended up here by chance while looking for a Simhaksan café dessert, and it turned out so much better than expected that I told everyone I know about it, haha.

A week later, revisit for the ₩32,000 mango bingsu

A week later my mom and I were both craving mango bingsu, so after eating near Paju Book City we stopped by, haha. The mango bingsu is ₩32,000, a bit pricier, but it comes with about 2 whole mangoes and the quality is solid, so it's justified 👍🏻

Saying this is exactly what you work for, we polished off the mango bingsu in no time, then got so hooked on mango we added a ₩8,000 fresh mango and a 1+1 mango juice on top — full mango party, haha.

Wrap-up — who should go

If you're curious about figs, give the fig bingsu a try! If you've just eaten at a Simhaksan restaurant and want something sweet at a nearby Simhaksan café, or you're after a different kind of fresh-fruit bingsu, Fruit Forest Paju Direct Store is worth a visit — beyond bingsu, they also do coffee and fresh fruit drinks 💕