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.

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