Southeast and East Asian desserts are having their deserved moment in the sun in Melbourne. Sulbing and Homm Dessert at Heart inspire queues for their bingsu, while Japanese souffle pancakes and Indonesian martabak are all the rage at Kumo Desserts and Martabak Pecenongan 78.

It’s fitting then that Lulu’s Char Koay Teow – famed for churning out the iconic Malaysian rice noodle dish from the flames of its piping hot wok – has opened up the adjacent Pandan Dessert Bar, specialising in all manner of Malaysian desserts. You can order dessert at Lulu’s, or vice versa at the mint green-themed Pandan Dessert Bar, the heading “bingsu”. It’s not only a clever marketing ploy to entice Melbourne diners more familiar with the Korean shaved ice dessert, but a label that affects the preparation of the very desserts themselves – the coarser ice textures typically found in both have been swapped out for the finer ice textures of bingsu.

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It doesn’t matter so much with the ABC ice kacang. An acronym of “air batu campur” in Malay, which translates to “mixed ice”, it’s fitting this dessert is a melange of ingredients. The perfumed rose syrup shaved ice is a receptacle for every texture and flavour imaginable – slippery black rice jelly with a hint of bitterness, slightly gelatinous nata de coco with a lingering sweetness, nutty red beans, creamy sweet corn with a slight bite. Coupled with the scoop of ice-cream atop and Pandan’s ice kacang is a swirling mess of colours and sensations – as every good one should be.

The cendol, however, is a let-down. The best cendols are dominated by coconut and palm sugar, so much so they taste savoury, caramelised, almost pungent. The coconut shaved ice in Pandan Dessert Bar’s cendol is overly mild, briefly enlivened by a pour of the accompanying palm sugar syrup, only to resume blandness once the top sugar-infused layer has been eaten. With shaved ice so fine, the dessert never reaches the almost soupy consistency a good cendol does.

It’s the only lowlight. The silken smooth soy pandan pudding evokes the Chinese dessert douhua, punctuated by the sweetness of longan and gummy glutinous rice balls. On the advice of a waitstaff, we order the original monkfruit jelly – sans milk or soy milk – served cold. It features assorted jellies, yes, but floating in a herbal soup teeming with other ingredients like sago, longan and waiflike sheets of snow fungus. As soothing as it is refreshing, it’d be the perfect antidote for a hot summer’s day.

Not a regular menu item, the fluorescent green pandan chiffon cake on the display cabinet is nevertheless another highlight. The salted butter icing is a perfect complement to the pillowy sponge, as light as a cloud. With a small shopfront that is regularly packed out, Pandan Dessert Bar is doing an admirable job of popularising desserts that are common in Malaysia, but lesser known here.

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