1. It's not a snow cone.
2. It's "Shave Ice," not "Shaved Ice."
3. Go ahead and get the ice cream in the bottom. And the red azuki beans.
4. Get more than one flavor. And please, be adventurous.
Where to go? For years, I would have told you the obvious answer: Matsumoto's Shave Ice on the North Shore. But I've also in recent years become a huge fan of Waiola Shave Ice in town (with two locations, on Kapahulu and in McCully).
So how do the two stack up?
vs. 
Ice: The ice is finer at Waiola, shaved super thin, It's a tad coarser at Matsumoto's. ADVANTAGE: Waiola.
Matsumoto's
Syrups: I ordered li hing mui (a sweet/salty dried plum flavor) and lychee at both locations. Waiola's flavors were on the spot. The li hing mui tasted like it was supposed to, and the lychee tasted like I had actually bit into the fruit. At Matsumoto's, the li hing mui flavor didn't taste like anything. And their lychee flavor was colored red. Huh? Lychee is white, people. (Sure, the shell is red, but the meat of the fruit is white.) ADVANTAGE: Waiola.
Waiola
Ice cream: Thanks to the coarser ice at Matsumoto's, the syrup falls down to the ice cream -- making for a tasty combo you can suck on a straw. At Waiola, the ice is too fine for the syrup to reach the ice cream -- so by the time you make it past the ice, you're just eating vanilla ice cream (rather boring). ADVANTAGE: Matsumoto's.
Location: With two locations in town, Waiola is easy to get to when you've got the shave ice craving. But Matsumoto's is located on Oahu's beautiful North Shore, in Haleiwa, and feels much more like a special treat. ADVANTAGE: Tie.
Result: I gotta go with Waiola Shave Ice, our champ in Franklin Avenue's Shave Ice Showdown!
(Waiola pic from Ono Kine Grindz.)
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