La Grotta, April 14

I wrote about La Grotta Ices at Spa Terminus last year. More accurately, probably, I raved about them but winter happened and it was six months before I managed to get my second shot at Kitty Travers' ice cream. If they were open over the winter it was never when I was at Spa Terminus. Clearly my relationship with La Grotta is only ever going to be fond but sporadic. My bank account would probably argue that this is for the best. I am not one to begrudge the cost of high quality ingredients or limited production but £5 for two scoops is priiiiicey.

Still, I am greedy and I couldn't resist so I coughed up willingly enough. I opted for the Sea Salt Rosemary Caramel & Pine Nut Brittle and Kumquat Custard & Bitter Choc-Chip. All points for flavour originality. I stand by last review that La Grotta are better with fruit. The rosemary caramel was slightly unsettling. It wasn't unpleasant, I quite liked it, but it was odd. Despite running an ice cream blog, I don't have a particularly sweet tooth but this was arguably too savoury, even for me. Salt + rosemary + pine nuts are a lot of main course ingredients for your pudding. There might have been too much rosemary... I'm not sure if I've had it in ice cream before but I have baked with it and I think you have to use it sparingly - it is such a meaty, powerful herb and it was a bit overwhelming in the ice cream. The pine nuts were actually kind of invisible next to the rosemary and I've had delicious pine nut ice cream before at San Crispino's in Rome. Individually all of those flavour do/could work for an ice cream but either they're too much in combination or the balance was just off.

Kumquat custard / Salted rosemary

The kumquat was lovely though, unusual rather than weird. I don't have a great deal of experience with kumquats but the custard was charmingly fruity, both creamy and a little sharp, and the dark chocolate stracciatella made for a nice balance. Both ice creams were an excellent temperature (very important!) and there was a slight roughness to the texture that I really enjoyed.

Sure, La Grotta is difficult to track down and expensive and the experimental flavour combinations aren't always 100% to my taste but the quality is wonderful and they're always interesting and I will never pass up a chance to eat their offerings.

Oddono's, Oxford St

As something of a food snob (I know it’s an unattractive quality but I really do love food and care about how it is produced. I hate elitism but I also hate Domino’s hot dog stuffed crust with a burning passion – I am torn! It is tricky. Oh, the many and wondrous contradictions of being human… ANYWAY) I am highly distrustful of shopping centre food courts. Of course, Selfridges is really your typical mall but I purchased their onsite ice cream with a certain amount of wariness. [Another slight diversion: for reference, I do not do my food shopping at Selfridges – that would obviously be crazy. I was on the hunt for Aussiemite for my beloved Madre. They used to stock the Marmite-esque yeast extract (yum) in Waitrose and she got herself addicted but they have since withdrawn it. I checked an uber Waitrose, the Whole Foods London flagship and Selfridges and then ran out of ideas. I believe they’re currently withdrawn from the UK at large but are planning a return. However, if you do see a spare jar please let me know. *End diversion*]

Oddono’s have a counter in the basement of Selfridges and while the aspect was not tempting, none of the sun streaked vias or piazzas that are the ideal setting for ice cream, I am an intrepid soul. Also, I was already aware of Oddono’s, who run a couple of more upmarket independent gelaterias around London. And, in spite of the surroundings, it was pretty good. Over-refrigeration struck again but the price was v reasonable. £2.30 for two scoops, if I remember correctly, which will seem like a bargain when I blog a recent La Grotta encounter. London does mess with your conception of legitimate pricing though. A friend recently called a £15 burger reasonable! Admittedly, the burger was from Hawskmoor – five kinds of pork! - and we called her out on it immediately but I can just about see where she was coming from…

Tbh wit ya, the Pistachio was a bit lacklustre. It didn’t have the smokiness or the depth of flavour that I prefer which is sacrilege and it was packed with gristly shards of nut that added no value and proceeded to get horribly stuck in my teeth. But, the Hazelnut was good. It was rich and creamy with a nice balance of sweetness. I enjoyed it. When combined with the Selfridges magazine shop (which is pretty epic and definitely the best place in the whole building) it made the horrendously overcrowded department store almost bearable. If you are on Oxford St and the brink of losing your fairly limited patience and punching a dawdling tourist in the stomach there are worse places you could go and have a little calm down. In fact, if you had Oddono’s for pudding after stuffing your face with the most delicious chicken wings and a burger you would have the makings of a very fine meal in a mostly unpleasant location.

Cadbury Creme Egg Minis

Well, these are delightful. I love Creme Eggs in all their insane, sugary glory and I eagerly look forward to my mandatory one a year (sometimes two but rarely more – they’re just too sickly for me now although I could eat half a dozen in my youth). It is with great interest and fondness that I watch Cadbury trying to expand the brand; Halloween Screme Eggs are intrinsically and emotionally wrong, the Cream Egg bar helps balance the chocolate: filling ratio but it is ultimately overwhelming. The problem with the tubs of Creme Egg ice cream is that Creme Eggs have no flavour. Beyond the chocolate shell they are just sugar, sugar and more sugar. Swirling the filling through misc white (not vanilla) ice cream gets you nowhere and the chunks of chocolate are insufficient distraction. The resulting spoonful is boring and Creme Eggs should not be boring.

But look at these, they’re adorable! The ice cream situation isn’t much improved but size and form wins the day. Like a Creme Egg you have a proper shell, white and distinct yolk and you have the cone to take your mind of the blandness of the ice cream. That is exactly why I am a fan of cups (well, one of the reasons) but a cone is just right here. And, more importantly, you can eat them in two bites. It doesn’t even really matter what they taste like. You don’t eat Creme Eggs because of the taste and these mini cones capture in ‘ice cream’ (using the term rather loosely) form exactly what is most fun about Creme Eggs – the visual hit, the rush of sugar and the deep seated silliness.

Snowflake, Soho

I have a chosen London gelateria. Gelupo has won my affection over the years with its consistently excellent flavours, textures and charm. I am very rarely disappointed by Gelupo and I eat there often. However, in the name of science (and greed) I feel obliged to tread new ground, explore the ice creams uneaten and test new gelaterias. It was following this philanthropic impulse that I sampled Snowflake on Wardour St which came highly recommended by A Little Bird, a weekly newspaper of which I am fond and which, for the most part, I trust. Sure, it is high-Yuppie but there is a part of me that loves organic Swedish skin care and Farrow & Ball’s new line of children’s clothes and £70 floor cushions. It’s a beautiful dream. Plus, their event recommendations are reliably good – tried and tested. All of that is to say that I had high hopes for Snowflake and said hopes were brutally dashed.

I would have been willing to overlook the naff name and the plasticky iPod-style shop if the ice cream had been good but it wasn’t. I had Sea Salted Caramel and Hazelnut and both tasted like sugared margarine. They were much too sweet and they tasted and felt strangely hydrogenated – they slipped almost greasily down your throat before you could even decide to swallow them. Also, and this is a fairly common complaint, they were too cold. That might sound ridiculous but if an ice cream is too cold you can’t enjoy the flavour or the texture properly. I’m not sure why some ice creameries are over refrigerating the good (is it shelf life? If so, please just make smaller batches!) but I would like them to stop.

This probably sounds a bit harsh. Snowflake isn’t the worst ice cream I’ve ever had but lacklustre ice cream so disappoints me. Such wasted potential! Ice cream can be the most delicious thing in the world (fact) so why accept less than perfection? Plus, the price tag on central London ice cream demands consideration. If you are serious about eating ice cream in Soho, in London generally, you are wasting your time here.

(Surprise Puppy)

Frankie by Tracey Ayton

I mean, obviously, dogs shouldn't really be eating ice cream but....  AWWW.

(Apparently she is an Italian Pointer, no comments on the ice cream flavour although it looks pretty good too.)

That is all.

- RS

La Grotta Ices, Spa Terminus

Pictures via @LaGrottaIces

This ice cream date has been a long time coming. Kitty Travers started selling ice creams from the back of an ape in 2009 and I have been wanting to try one ever since. She flitted through farmers's markets spreading happiness and chilled deliciousness and I repeatedly missed her. La Grotta Ices and I passed each other like ships in the night. Or like a ship and an erratically steered dinghy in the night. For a while she had a semi-regular spot at Maltby market but on the one occasion I managed to coincide with her she had sold out. Cruel fate...

However, we were serendipitously united last Saturday. It wasn't even intentional which, I suppose, is how these things often work. Travers currently has a fairly permanent space at Spa Terminus (the railway arches deeper into Bermondsey where many of the Maltby Street wholesalers have decamped to - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) and despite the sun being rather past the yardarm there was still ice cream!

I had a cup (always a cup - perhaps I shall expound on this at a later date, look forward to that treat) of 'bitter chocolate caramel' and 'Belle du Louvain plum custard'. The chocolate was nice but the plum was wonderful. I thought there was something slightly off about the chocolate; I love bitter chocolate and I think it makes for great ice cream but bitter caramel is a less tempting proposition and this ice cream maybe leaned slightly towards the latter. I appreciate the culinary world's recent experiments with caramel and a well balanced salted caramel is mouthjoy itself but is sugar interesting/complex enough to stand apart from its sweetness? Gelupo have recently rechristened their salted caramel ice cream as 'salted burnt sugar' and never a truer name. Although they are generally infallible I have to pass on this one - it does what it says on the tin and what it says on the tin is not ideal.

But the plum, heaven. I think I've read somewhere that Travers loves making fruit-based ice cream and rightfully so because she has nailed it. This was very much an ice cream, not a sorbet - rich, smooth, creamy. It was thick and velvety and dotted with chunks of biscuit, possibly Ameretti although I'd be inclined to say a brown butter biscuit perhaps? Whatever they were, they were delicious, holding their form but not interrupting the ice cream. It was a thing of glory and mouth is watering thinking about it.

WELL WORTH THE WAIT. Also, overheard, La Grotta Ices aren't made by stirring the cooling mixture to prevent crystallization but rather by freezing the mixture and then slicing with blades to break the ice crystals. Intriguing. Anyway, perfect ten on the plum and I will be back to Spa Terminus soon for more.

- RS

In the Beginning

There was the word and the word was ice cream.

Well, that is two words and a trifle blasphemous perhaps but the sentiment stands.

I think subconsciously I always believed that my love of ice cream would, if not diminish, at least become less childishly joyous as I sidled into adulthood. In this, as in so many other things, life is proving me wrong. My love has matured into a beautiful obsession that, as a London dweller, enthusiastic traveler, home cook and greedy pig, I have plenty of opportunities to indulge.

This is my space to wax poetic about gelaterias, recipes and favourites. All is ice cream.