Vitamine D Ice cream deficiency in Winter is a serious issue that needs to be looked into ( 😉 ) One post was not enough to present all my tips to keep you happy even when your favourite ice cream shop is closed for Winter, so after part 1, here’s part 2, which aims to find solutions for people who love ice cream, but consider “ice cream” and “Winter” incompatible.
Tip 2: Go to where thermometers show >20°C and where the good ice cream is
Sorry for the delay in publishing my Tip#2 for coping with ice cream shop Winter breaks… but I was actually putting my own tip into practise! 🙂 I was exploring Peru and trying a few scoops.
Here are some of the nice ice cream shops I tried elsewhere in the world, during European Winter:
1. Siem Reap, Cambodia
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Gelato Lab, Siem Reap
Siem Reap, located in the North-West of Cambodia is the closest city to the beautiful temples of Angkor. It’s very warm and sunny at this time of the year (about 32°C when I was there), so after a full (tiring) day visiting all the temples, you’ll be very glad to indulge in the cool & tasty gelato from Gelato Lab! They offer a nice selection of gelato: some flavours are made with local ingredients, such as Kampot pepper, bananas, mangos, dragon fruit or passion fruit. All of their gelato is free from hydrogenated fats, artificial colourings / flavours, preservatives and emulsifiers.
Most importantly the gelato at Gelato Lab tastes good & has a nice texture! I tried the dragon fruit gelato as well as mandarin. 😀
Gelato Lab address: Alley W, Siem Reap, Siemreab-Otdar Meanchey, Cambodia
Facebook: facebook.com/gelatolabsiemreap
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Night Market, around Pub Street, Siem Reap
In the evening, there are many vendors making “fried” ice rolls. Pick a few flavours and they will chop them up with cream, roll out the mixture and serve the small ice rolls with the toppings of your choice.
In my opinion, the fresh fruit is the key to the tastiness of these ice rolls!
2. Lima, Peru
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BLU Gelateria, Lima
As you can imagine, my recent trip to Peru led me to doing some online research about the best ice cream shops in Peru! My results were the most fruitful in Lima: BLU Gelateria was one of the two ice cream shops I really wanted to try.
BLU has been making delicious gelato in the Barranco district for the past 4 years. I wish I’d had more time to explore Barranco, known as Lima’s Bohemian District, but I was busy eating most of the time..!
The gelato flavours on offer at BLU were: elderberry cream, brazil nut, pecan nuts, quito quito, custard apple (chirimoya), dark chocolate and cocoa nibs, passion fruit-mango, gianduja, blueberry, etc. Other flavours you might find: Andean mint (muña), granadilla (a relative of passion fruit), lúcuma, coffee, …
Picking the first flavour was easy: I was introduced to “custard apple” in Australia a few years ago and I LOVED it! Since then I have only eaten it a few times, when traveling to countries where I spotted them on the market. I was over the moon when I came across “chirimoya” in Lima and when Google Translate taught me this was custard apple! 🙂
After much hesitation, I picked mango-passion fruit as a second flavour, while my boyfriend picked the other flavours I wanted to try: brazil nut and pecan nut. All flavours tasted great and the texture was very pleasant, but I enjoyed the nut flavours most! Those were new flavours for me to try in gelato form. If you are wondering what quito-quito is like, here’s what it looks like:
BLU uses no artificial flavours, colourings or preservatives!
BLU gelateria addresses:
- Barranco district: Jirón 28 de julio 202, Lima, Peru
- Miraflores district: you can also find BLU gelato at Mercado 28, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa con 28 de Julio 755, Second Floor, Lima
Facebook: facebook.com/gelatodelbarrio
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Crem dela Crem, Lima
Barranco is clearly the district to pop by in Lima if you want to try good ice cream: because this is also where you’ll find Crem dela Crem!
Which of these flavours would you choose? dulce de leche, apple pie, lúcuma, blueberry cheesecake, bananas fosters, mango, granadilla or red grapes? We tried:
- lúcuma – a fruit I had never heard of before traveling to Peru, which quickly became one of my favourites for ice cream / milkshakes! “Nutty” is the best word that comes to my mind when describing lúcuma. It is native to the Andean valleys of Peru and Ecuador. According to Wikipedia, Peru is one of few countries in the world where the third most popular ice cream flavour (after vanilla and chocolate) is NOT strawberry, but lúcuma!
- bananas fosters – this is typically a dessert from New Orleans made with bananas, vanilla ice cream, along with a sauce made of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, rum. This bananas fosters gelato was so good!
- granadilla – another fruit native to the Andes mountains, related to passion fruit.
Crem dela Crem whips up fresh gelato every day, made with natural and mainly Peruvian ingredients. I am pleased to say that they don’t use preservatives or artificial colouring.
Crem dela Crem address: 109 Parque Municipal, Barranco, Lima, Peru
Facebook: facebook.com/cremdelacrem.gelateria
3. Delhi, India
My main advice in this post is to “Go to where thermometers show >20°C and where the good ice cream is“: with its 41°C in May last year, Delhi clearly qualifies…! 🙂 Before traveling to Delhi, I visited a few places in the South of India, in the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Although I didn’t do any research beforehand about good ice cream shops, guess what I was doing within my first hour in Kerala?! … I was sampling all the gelato flavours at an ice cream shop that now seems to have permanently closed. The quality of the gelato wasn’t the best ever, but the fruit they used to make the gelato was clearly very ripe and tasty: I had never tasted any mango gelato that good before! 🙂
I attended a yoga program for a few days before flying up North to Delhi: I became more and more excited about food in Delhi as I heard other participants rave about the food scene in Delhi! This encouraged me to do some research about the best kulfi (Indian ice cream) and classic ice cream in Delhi and I also got some recommendations from locals.
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Trying kulfi in Delhi
I’ve been a fan of kulfi since I read about it in a recipe book I owned as a child and I’ve been wanting to try “real kulfi” in India for a long time! 🙂 Kulfi is a frozen milk dessert which is traditionally flavoured with rose, cardamom and pistachio.
In Delhi, I was staying at a friend of a friend’s and until getting there I didn’t know in which part of the city we were staying. I made sure I marked all the most recommended kulfi vendors in Google maps to ensure I could try at least one! In the end, because of thermal, geographical and time constraints I only had one shot at trying kulfi & it was unfortunately not up to my expectations! I didn’t pick the right kulfi vendor…
Ah well, trying better kulfi will be on my to-do list the next time I travel to India!
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Naturals, Delhi
In their own words, “Naturals has been pioneer in making artisan ice creams using only fruits, dry fruits, chocolates, milk and sugar”. Naturals recently celebrated its anniversary… funnily enough it was founded in Mumbai just a few weeks before I was born! 😀 Now there are Naturals franchises in multiples cities throughout India.
For me the highlight at Naturals was the selection of seasonal and “native” flavours, such as: jamun (kala jamun), jackfruit, tender coconut, sapota (chickoo), guava, custard apple, etc. We picked: jamun, jackfruit, mango, tender coconut and sapota!
Natural Ice Cream addresses:
- Gurgaon, Delhi: Shop no., Galleria Tower, SG – 104, Hamilton Ct Rd, DLF Phase IV, Huda Market, Gurugram, Haryana 122002, India
- New Delhi: Block L, Connaught Place, Delhi 110001, India
- Many more locations in Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Pune, Bengaluru, etc. I recommend searching for “Natural ice cream” in Google maps.
Facebook: facebook.com/Naturalicecream
I hope this post helps you to choose the best destination for your next ice cream!
Feature photo by Brendan Church on Unsplash.
