Kappu Ice cream

 

You open my cupboard, you’ll see black clothes. Black shirt, black pant, black jacket, black bra, and all that. You open my shoe cupboard, and it’s the same; black converse, black running shoes, black ballerinas, black kolhapuri; you get the idea. So when I heard that had black ice cream, I had to eat it.

It’s not that I haven’t seen black food, sometimes my friend burns the chappati and it becomes dark brown, almost black. Sometimes you forget about the food you had hid in your bag, one fungus infestation happens and that also becomes green, and then black.

But black ice cream was not rotten food, anthe. Something about charcoal, they said. I’d been reading quite a bit about going zero waste, and charcoal was supposed to be a natural cleaning agent used in tooth paste and stuff. Instead of tooth paste, I could just consume it, an organ version of detox, you could say.

The first store with this black ice cream to open in Bangalore was Fritz Haber, a place too far and inaccessible to civilization. So I waited, these fads catch on, you know. Soon enough, Mama Mia opened in Indiranagar.

The store was lit dimly, like it was a Hogwarts corridor. It had a brown wall on one side, and white one on the other. The brown wall had some fake plants, and some white and purple pebbles in a Keventers bottle. The white wall said ‘La Dolce Vita’ in cursive, and it was quite catchy. Eno pa.

I knew what I wanted before I even walked in. The extravagant menu on the wall behind the counter made no mention of anything remotely close to the word ‘black’, so I looked through the ice cream storage and found the black ice cream in the furthest corner. ‘Vanilla Startdust’, I think it was called.

Teddy being the thoughtful child that he is; he read my mind and got me the black ice cream in a black cone. Wowzie.

I shut my eyes tight, hoped it would be nice took a leap of faith and gave it a lick. It was sugar. It was just plain sugar syrup, and nothing else. It didn’t even taste like vanilla, da.  Teddy being the whiskey aficionado, heard that some variation of chocolate ice cream was called Whiskey-something took that. Good thing he uses his brain sometimes.

And the black cone? I hoped it would at least be crispy, but no. It was thick and chewy, and faintly tasted like egg. As I finished the last bit of the black chocolate ice cream stuff that I had, I knew that I would retreat back into my rocky road cave, and would never try to be adventurous with my ice cream again.

 

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Rolled Over

I’m not much of an experimenter when it comes to food- my taste buds are particular about certain flavors. You take me to Kamat, I’ll get Jollad Rotti; take me to any Darshini, I’ll get a Rava Idly; take me to a pastry shop, I’ll get pineapple or chocolate; like I said, fixed.

When I went to Roll Over, a new ice cream parlor in the locality, I closed my eyes and picked something chocolate in it- Oreo Overload, and V went with Filter Kapi.

The concept of rolled ice cream was fairly new to V and I. We stood there looking at the guy beating my poor Oreos and ice cream up; he then made up for it by massaging my ice cream very sensually. Next, he patted it to sleep rather smoothly. And then, he scooped it all up, rolling it in the process.

As visually appealing as it looked, I must tell you, I was super disappointed. I loved the crunchiness of the cone. But the ice cream, not so much. Contrary to the name, there was no over load of Oreo at all. Rather, I could see specs of Oreo in my ice cream but taste more of vanilla, and almost nothing of the Oreo. The Filter Kapi, was quite bleak too – with the slightest tinge of coffee flavors. And there were three tiny rolls of ice cream which just got over, with a few minutes. I don’t get these new places and their obsession with serving tiny amounts of ice cream. (Corner House, bless you!).

The ambience of the place was comparatively appealing to V, he seems to like places which are bright and have white lights everywhere. But if you’re a dim place nocturnal creature like me, then here’s another red flag.

Nevertheless, I’m pretty determined to go try more flavors, and maybe change my opinion of this place. But until then, Rocky Road for life!