Parsley root ice cream and Michelin-starred flavors: ice cream, beyond dessert
In the summer, we may feel nostalgic, waiting anxiously for our vanilla scoops to be dipped in powdered sugar at the pastry shop. Just like sitting under an umbrella on the shore of Lake Balaton, eagerly licking our chocolate ice cream, which is already dripping down our elbows in the 32-degree heat.
But something has changed in recent years. In the kitchens of truly progressive restaurants, ice cream, sorbet and gelato are no longer just a final dish, but a concept in their own right: one of the most exciting tools in the playground of flavors, textures and temperatures. Of course, we don’t have to give up on ice cream in Balaton, but it’s worth noting that this summer delicacy has evolved into something completely different. This process is perfectly exemplified by the five dishes presented below, presented from different locations.
COPD – London
Santiago Lastra's restaurant works with a Mexican spirit and British ingredients, making the KOL tasting menu an excitingly coordinated whole. Mole and tacos are true classics, but dessert is guaranteed to surprise: the palette, a Mexican ice cream on a stick, is served in a seemingly fragile flower. The highlight of the spring menu is tulip petals from Flourish Farm, which are frozen in liquid nitrogen, causing them to shatter like glass. Inside is pear-beetroot sorbet and meringue, topped with a peach-chili finish.
Lilo – Carlsbad, California
Just six weeks after opening, Lilo, a restaurant where chef Eric Bost brings the spirit of the Californian coast to Japanese fermentation techniques, has already received its first Michelin star. At the center of the menu is a dish that could perhaps be the symbol of the entire restaurant: orgeat ice cream covered in bushi made from dried and smoked celery stalks, and finished with Ossetra caviar. According to Michelin’s assessment, the second half of the menu slowly shifts from savory to sweet, which this dish perfectly represents: sweet, salty and rich in umami. Not quite a dessert, but not quite a main course, which makes tasting it a kind of playful adventure.
MÁK restaurant – Budapest
János Mizsei's restaurant has long been an exciting scene in Hungarian fine dining with its creatively curated menus specializing in Hungarian regions. Whether you're looking to get to know the flavors of the southern regions more closely or discover biodynamic, organic wine specialties, you're in the right place - but their poppy, rose, blood orange dish is worth a detour in itself. The dessert, with its cleverly and spectacularly incorporated ice cream, is more like a series of associations than just a simple sweet closing chord: the poppy is earthy, heavy, and tasty, the rose is perfumed and fragile, while the blood orange is tart, characterful, and lively.
In Berlin's raw, trendy and vibrant Neukölln district, behind an unmarked door, lies the two Michelin-starred restaurant CODA, which opened in 2016. What makes it special is that there is no added sugar in any dish on the menu – even though it is a dessert parlor. Chef René Frank bases his dessert creations on seasonal ingredients, so the ice cream variations here also come to the plates in quite surprising flavors. For example, a dessert they presented last year was based on the different textures of tomatoes: tomato confit, caramelized tomatoes and tomato ice cream were served on a plate with macadamia nut milk flavored with sobrasada oil and sobrasada crisps. The result was simultaneously sweet, salty, smoky and rich in umami – completely reinterpreting what we can think of ice cream in the world of fine dining.
MINIMAL – Taichung, Tajimi
MINIMAL has made a name for itself globally by becoming the first – and so far only – ice cream parlor on Earth to be awarded a Michelin star. Arvin Wan opened the place in Taichung in 2021, in a concrete and steel façade with almost no signage, and the interior evokes a wabi-sabi aesthetic: rusty steel cladding, reclaimed roof beams, raw concrete. The menu has seven courses, and almost everything is served below zero degrees, the only exception being a butter pastry at the end of the menu, accompanied by longan-osmanthus gelato. But of course, that’s not the only special ice cream flavor: you can also try wild ginger flower sake lollipops, but also strawberry roselle cream made with liquid nitrogen, in the form of tiny ice crystals. You have to travel to Taiwan for the experience, but it’s definitely worth getting on a plane once.
