Japan - the true land of bizarre icecreams.

OK I thought I had seen some wierd icecreams. But Japan wins the wierd icecream stakes hands-down.

In Osaka/Kyoto - some more common flavours (in terms of common in Japan) were consumed:
Green tea - very popular in asia, sweet with a dry tea aftertaste
Sesame & Honey - a dark colour (dark sesame) with a very distinct sweet-sesame taste. Quite nice
Cherry blossum - tasted sweet, kinda like flowers (reminded me of the rosepetal icectreams in Japan)
Plum leaf - now I liked this flavour. This soft serve had a really tart/sour taste, nothing like lemon sorbet - way more sour, less sweet.
Yagori (?) - some wierd japanese herb/leaf. Reminded me of green tea with a slightly more bitter taste
Pumpkin - the icecream itself didn't have that much of a pumpkin flavour but it was served in a cone with some real mashed pumpkin and chestnut which combined with the orange coloured tasteless icecream worked well
Tofu - not much flavour, tasted a lot like vanilla but had a tinge of reminscent of tofu afterwards

Kyoto Icecream fun

In NamjaTown this crazy jap park there is this section called icecream land with a whole bunch of bizarre flavours. You can get everything from general flavours to ramen, curry, shark fin, beef, squid and other strange icecream flavours.
The Toyko jap crew tried Pearl (Yoko), Miso soup (Keiitch), Bamboo (Sami?) and Chicken (me).
Pearl just had small silver balls in vanilla.
Miso had a strong flavour with a definate miso aftertaste.
Bamboo had a flavour but not one I would have picked as bamboo.
Chicken didn't have much taste in the icecream as such but the chunks of chicken inside sure were different. You could actually chew them and then the taste of chicken came out. ewwwwwwww


Ice cream land

And I never got to try turkish icecream which is this ultra sticky/stretch icecream all over japan. Madddddddddddddddddimg

No tengo tiempo! US Icecreams

Sorry dudes. I have tried heaps of icecream but I haven't ever gotten around to writing about them. Hard to do when travelling! But here is a few more from the US:

a) Cold Slate icecream. A chain all over the US, but I tried it in Miami. Much like the Cold Rock (sim name eh) in Australia where you choose flavours and then they chop up stuff to put inside (like brownies etc). I was going to try apple pie - cream icecream with apple and pie crust chopped in. But this girl in line was talking up the mint with brownie and cookie crumble so I HAD to do that. Man the medium here is massive, and her combination was fantastic!

b) Can't remember the name, but they had a whole bunch of bizarre flavours. I went peanut butter (not wierd in the US, but it is in Oz), green tea and some other one which was like a sorbet mush with fruit and some sort of herb (looked like poppies). The green tea tasted like green tea, but the herb thing was bizarre, kinda like some watery fruit. Tasted great though with the cherry sauce on top (as the guy suggested)


c) This was like a bizarre bubble tea place (ok so it aint icecream) where you could get lots of flavoured juices and teas. I saw on the menu "Egg and honey juice" so I was like man I gotta try that, especially since it seems impossible. THen I see the chick out the back working out the whites of the eggs with her hands whilst preparing my drink. I was scared. But at the end it just tasted like a fruit smoothy. apparently they added fruit to it


d) At the farmers market this Peruvian chocolateer also sold gelato. I had the gelato with 75% cocoa peruvian chocolate, with choc bits and chilli. That was absolutely fantastic. The gelato consistency is nice so you just get a slight burn/hint of chili when you swallow. And the chocolate is rich but cos it's in gelato form not so creamy and overly intense. Man I wish I could bring that stuff home with me

e) Garlic icecream at The Stinking Rose. THis was way expensive and we went out of our way to try it. I was disappointed. There was a slight hint of a garlic aftertaste, but basically tasted like vanilla. Probably an accurate description is to have a spoon of vanilla with an unwashed spoon used in cooking something with garlic. A hint but nothing strong. And they put a caramel sauce on it which overpowered the garlic. But the restaraunt was totally funky, pornstar and decked out that it was worth going to!

Finally - a real test.

So everyone says I've been slack with my icecream blog. Well I have. But I made up for it at Tepoznieves in Aguascalientes. This is another branch of the same chain that I went to early in DF, but this time I did it properly.

OK. It was like this. I stumbled across the place and ordered two flavours, tequila & lime and some fruit and chili. I thought damn Im gonna do this place properly. So I came back and ordered 16 flavours, and tried a few more (just with spoons).


Food of the gods - and I thought I invented that connection with icecream

So documented what I had.

GENERALLY - Tepoznieves icecreams aren't that fantastic - a little to watery/icy/sorbet-gelato like. Nothing on helado de argentina. But they have odd flavours. So here goes.
Tequila y Lime - sorbet, exactly like a frozen margarita. joy
Arroz - rice icecream. Tastes like those ultra sweet rice deserts. sickeningly sweet
Zapote negro - zapote is a type of fruit. some sort of black sorbet, nothing spectacular, just tasted fruit like
piñan - pommygranet (spelling). not a em taste but the kernels were frozen so it was kinda wierd
mil flores - some random mixture of flower petals and cream. tasted kinda like a fruit icecream
higo con mezcal - higo is fig and mezcal is like the sister spirit of tequila. odd odd combination, sorta like rum and razin but far more bizarre
queso - cheese- this let me down, no em cheese flavour, was more milky
elote - elote is this food commonly sold on the street which consists of corn kernals (warm) swimming in butter, mayo and some light cheese. This had a hint of the corn/cheese flavour, but the frozen corn kernals is really what made it. It was surprsingly good

One bowl
cajeta - basically caramel, reminded me of dulce de leche like argentina (though not as good)
rompope - rompope is a liquer here kinda like a yellow advocat. So the icecream was as expected, tasting like a liquer icecream
hierba buena - ok, so Im not exactly sure, but apparently this is grass icecream? it was bright green, and tasted like a mix of grass and mint (it wasnt mint tho)
nieve de tepozlecto - icecream with a ton of dried fruit pieces. I loved this, had a great texture and tons of diff flavours from the fruit
mangolin - a sorbet of mango, chili & lime. It doesn't sound good but I loved it.
beso de angel - not sure what thsi is, pommygranet, mamey and strawberrys. Basically just tasted fruity with chunks of pommy
ron con piña - Icecream/sorbet consisting of rum and pineapple. Tasted heaps like the pina coladas I made. But they had a separate flavour called pina colada (but it was melted so I couldn't try it)
tres leches - three milks - it actually tasted milky (not just creamy)
leche quemada - Cream icecream. it was WAY WAY too creamy, think spraying a can of whipped cream down your throat.

Another bowl

OK so that's a wrap. I did well. The ladies totally thought I was crazy ordering and ordering. But it was fun being loco. Expect more.

Jat

Check out my pancake....

At the same place Gaby took me to this Pancake wizard/comedian rolled into one.

Basically he makes pancakes in figurines. Like kids were ordering Bart Simpson, Spongebob pancakes. They looked exactly like the characters.

Anyway, cos I was amoungst the older of pancake eaters, I got special treatment. Basically he made a pancake of a naked chick (chica). Cos I was standing with Gaby he asked if we were a couple and we were like no and that gave him enough material to start giving me shit about "why not" for the next 10 minutes. There was quite a crowd of people and he had everyone in stiches. Apparently this pancake was a Gaby special. Then once it was cooked, he gave me the knife and told be to butter the pancake. But he wouldn't let me butter up just any part of the pancake, just the parts I'm sure that you can image!



Apparently this is the only pancake artist in MX (or the only famous one). Man it was worth it, if not for his hilarious banter.

MX Icecream

Woah man, got my first taste of mexican Icecream. Or is that my first 1849812419 tastes. Gaby + Brenda took me to this place called Tepoznieves which had a ton of wierd flavours. The cool thing was that gaby kept getting (free) tasters of almost every flavour they had. We eventually bought some, but by that stage I was all flavoured out.



The most memorable flavours were:
Tequila (a let down for me, didn´t taste tequila like at all)
Rose petal (as you'd expect)
Cucumber (it tasted like cucumber - I had to spit it out in the bin, almost threw up. No I don't like Cucumber)
And a whole stack of bizarre flavours

They also had mixed flavours like a flower basket, which as the name suggests is icecream from a bunch of flowers. Whacked.

I got the compete menu, avail in here ultra hi res if you're keen

All in all I found the icecream less flavoursome (more watery? or basic) than that of Argentina, but then I am a bit sick (blocked up) so maybe my tasting skills arent quite up to scrach. No se.

Shift in focus - sweets generally

OK maybe I might shift from just icecream to a focus on sweets. What rocks about BA is the ton of dulces (sweets) around. ANd the prices of course. The other day I went to this really swanky buffet, ended up costing $7AUD for all you could eat and drink (including beer and wine). They also had a guy running a bbq who would get you any cut of meat you wanted. I went crazy. Just check out these pics.


One section of the buffet

I musta had 5 plates stacked of desert, but only tasted a bit of each. They also had these cool desert omlettes where they like fried butter & sugar so it caramlised, made the omlette, flamed it with liquer and added icecream. Just check out htis stuff. Madness. One of my favs was profiterols (spelling) filled with dulce de leche


Desert table

Flamed omlette



Some rounds of desert





A small aside, sometimes what you think are mushrooms are organs of some animal

First review...

OK finally here's the first ice cream tasting. I was at the markets buying some hats (what else) talking for AGES to the lady who made them (totally in spanish). She highly recommended this icecream place close to Recoleta Cemetary. I can't remember the name, I wrote it down but it's not on me now.

Anyway I had
Dulce De Leche Granizado
Sambayon Granizado.

Dulce de leche is like the most popular argentinan sweet ever. It literally means "sweet from milk" but tastes kinda like caramel.
Granizado means chocchip, or more like choc flakes. THey are a must with Dulce.
Dulce de leche icecream from this place had a bit of a honeycomb like taste, but was still very tasty, if not a little bit too sweet.

Sambayon - I don't exactly know what this is, except that it is liquer based. The guy said something about vino tinto, so I guess that means it has a red wine base. Quite honestly it didn't taste much like a liquer (I'm thinking rum here), but did have a sort of wine type hint.


Totally tasty. The pic sucks cos it started melting before I thought about actually taking a pic.

I have icecream every day

These reviews are way sucky cos I haven't had time to do them properly. But I will improve.

This night I had dulce de leche, mango & crema americana (no it's not vanilla). People are absolutely icecream CRAZY over. And why shouldn't they be, it's fkn fantastic

BA is icecream crazy

They have so many heladorias here (icecream palours) with custom icecream. And they are always packed.

I tried Dulce de leche con (some fancy spanish word meaning chocolate bits) y lemon sorbet. bloody excellent.


Dulce de leche is a way popular sweet here. It basically means sweet from milk, but it reminds me heaps of like a caramel, but with a more fudge like consistency. People put it on toast etc. It´s tasty. But tastier in icecream form.

No photos I'm afraid, and this is a crappy icecream entry cos I´m tired.. I'll do a better one later. So yeah, this one doesnt count cos a) no photo, b) can´t remember the name of place I tried it, and c) I can´t even remember the name of the gusto (flavour) properly.

It's far too cold to eat icecream

No, I can't believe I'm saying this either....

tasty

I scream you scream.