{"id":29990,"date":"2019-10-18T14:34:25","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T13:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=29990"},"modified":"2019-10-18T14:34:25","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T13:34:25","slug":"a-break-from-ben-jerrys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/a-break-from-ben-jerrys\/","title":{"rendered":"A break from Ben & Jerry’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Milk is undoubtedly glorious in all of its secondary forms, but <\/span>god<\/span><\/i>\u00a0is ice cream delicious. Any kind, really, but I\u2019ve grown tired of my usual Ben and Jerry\u2019s Half Baked. And though I always feel like I\u2019m cheating when I eat something else, passion has grown to overtake reason and I\u2019m left with one mission: find the most unique ice cream in London.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After all, what\u2019s the point in living in a world capital<\/span>\u00a0if you don\u2019t go on an adventure every now and then?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mamasons Dirty Ice Cream<\/b>\"\"\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It started<\/span>\u00a0at Mamasons Dirty Ice Cream in Soho. Much like a child, bright colours draw me in and before I knew it, I had lavender ice cream all over my face.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Totally worth it. Mamasons is a trendy take on Filipino desserts, serving flavours such as a pitch dark Black Buko<\/em>, or charcoal coconut, and Ube<\/em>, a native purple yam similar to taro, in Bilogs<\/em>. What are Bilogs<\/em>, you ask?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, delicious for starters. It’s a freshly toasted milk bun filled with their signature flavours. It certainly helps that they\u2019ve got the mouthfeel down-pat. It\u2019s dense, rich, hits like a meal, and is most certainly worth the money.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Though I have to say – the Ube<\/em> could be much better blended. It adds a texture reminiscent of butternut squash, which I suppose makes sense considering it\u2019s a root. Still, it\u2019s not exactly what I\u2019m looking for in an ice cream.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just about everything I saw caught my eye, but there was something in particular that piqued my interest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the menu was an ice cream called \u201cqueso\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I mulled it over as I waited. Queso? But isn\u2019t that <\/span>cheese<\/span><\/i>? So I googled it and no, I wasn\u2019t mistaken.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a foodie, I consider myself to be fairly well versed on cuisines across the world, so I was surprised I\u2019d never heard of this before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So I tried it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But did I like it?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hell no. The cashier compared it to cheesecake, but I strongly beg to differ. It\u2019s so sharp on the cheddar, pungent almost, not cut nearly well enough with sugar and cream to tie it together. And where their dense creaminess makes their Black B<\/span>uko one of Chinatown\u2019s not-so-hidden gems, this particular dish smothered my palate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Soft Serve Society<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"I stumbled across Soft Serve Society whilst crossing Shoreditch\u2019s BoxPark. It wasn\u2019t the sign that caught my eye, but instead the man sitting below it with a black cone filled with dark grey ice cream in hand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Much like Mamasons, the black ice cream is charcoal coconut, but as far as I\u2019m concerned, it\u2019s a whole different dish.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As you may have figured, this place specialises instead in soft-serve. But it\u2019s still smooth- possibly the smoothest I\u2019ve ever had, and though the creamy coconut is delicious, it isn\u2019t what makes the ice cream as unique as it is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While Mamasons charcoal coconut’s actual charcoal adds no more than its inky colour, Soft Serve Society utilises it in a refreshing way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost\u2026 crunchy, and upon further inspection, you can see the tiny black crystals blended into the ice cream. They\u2019re the perfect size, don\u2019t add much of a taste, but the mouthfeel is unlike anything I\u2019ve ever had before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a beautiful contradiction. Once it melts on your tongue, your palate is left with a confusing but wonderfully pleasant texture. There\u2019s nothing to <\/span>chew<\/span><\/i>, per se, but if you bite around the quickly melting softness, you feel it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Chin Chin Labs<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"There\u2019s something about an eatery with the word \u2018Lab\u2019 at the end of it that catches my fancy. Sounds futuristic, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It sorta is. Their ice cream is frozen on-demand with liquid nitrogen, leaving you to watch your server disappear into a white cloud only to reappear moments later with your ice cream in a bright red waffle cone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I got the Tonka Bean, mostly because I had absolutely no clue what on earth it was. The cashier described it as being most similar to a vanilla bean, and though that momentarily cut its appeal, I figured I\u2019d try it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What a pleasant surprise! It\u2019s like eating Thanksgiving and Christmas all at once!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It tastes familiar, yet unlike anything you\u2019ve had before. It\u2019s spiced. The Tonka Bean is surprisingly strong in flavour, drawing in bits of fall and winter. It\u2019s most comparable to a chai latte, or maybe a pumpkin spice latte minus the coffee. It isn\u2019t something to enjoy during the warmer months, but it\u2019s the perfect holiday treat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s incredibly rich as a result of the nitrogen- dense enough for me to wonder if I couldn\u2019t spread it across my toast. But the waffle cone was close, if you could even consider it that. The shape may fool you, but upon biting into it, you\u2019ll realise it\u2019s a sugar cookie in disguise and an impressively thick one at that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After his first bite, my friend paused, looked at me, and said, \u201cI could write poetry about this sh*t.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what kind of art Chin Chin is practising, but they appear to have mastered it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

London knows it\u2019s ice cream. There were a handful of places I tried, all good, like Ruby Violet\u2019s Raspberry Rosewater Prosecco sorbet, but I definitely have a bias towards the rich and creamy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"There isn\u2019t one that\u2019s significantly better than the other. At its price point of \u00a36.50, Mamasons Bilog<\/em> is the best value for money- it\u2019s fairly large, making it the most filling, but Chin Chin\u2019s nitrogen technology has a futuristic appeal to is and is most certainly delicious. Regardless, the charcoal in Soft Serve Society\u2019s ice cream takes the cake- or waffle cone, if you will.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s satisfying, but not too filling- perfect as a midday snack or a light dessert after dinner, and the versatility in not one aspect, but two makes it the most unique ice cream in London.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Words and pictures by Kieran Mehra<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Milk is undoubtedly glorious in all of its secondary forms, but god\u00a0is ice cream delicious. Any kind, really, but I\u2019ve grown tired of my usual Ben and Jerry\u2019s Half Baked. And though I always…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":29999,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,70,82],"tags":[1307,2439,3088,3947,5734],"class_list":["post-29990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","category-ice-cream","category-lifestyle","tag-chin-chin-labs","tag-food","tag-ice-cream","tag-mamasons","tag-soft-serve"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}