Ice cream

When I think of my childhood summers, I think of Mr Whippy. I think of those familiar, distant Pavlovian chimes, carrying the promise of frozen, sugary goodness. I think of the zombified children sprinting across the common towards a tutti frutti Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. I think of 99 Flakes with all the toppings, of oyster delights half-dipped in chocolate, of plastic cones filled with radioactive-blue soft serve and gumballs… The ice cream van has been dying a slow death these past 30 years. In the halcyon era of the soft-serve automobile, it was estimated that there were more than 30,000 ice cream vans roaming the UK. Today, that figure sits at around 2,500, with some estimates as low as 1,500.  If the ice cream van is a rare sight, its siren call is even rarer.

In the depths of winter last year, an ice cream and wine bar opened in Islington. The Dreamery serves ice creams and sorbets in silver goblets with tiny vintage spoons. On the ceiling is a glowing mural of happy cows and a sun with a face, resembling a child’s finger-painting (the artist is Lucy Stein, daughter of Rick). Outside, neighbours whisper about a recent Dua Lipa spotting. The Dreamery is inspired by the Parisian ice cream and wine bar Folderol, and makes fairly sophisticated flavours such as salted ricotta blueberry and Greek mountain tea. It is TikTok chic – a gamble, after Folderol unwillingly became a viral sensation and ended up sticking up signs saying: ‘No TikTok. Be here to have fun, not to take pictures.

When I’m out on small New Jersey roads — sometimes Virginia roads, but I don’t see them there as often — I always take an extra second to look at ice cream stands. You know the place: a basic, boxy building with a little awning, an ornamented, angular front, one or two counters to order, and more often than not no inside seating or even a customer entrance. The staff are usually high-schoolers, maybe retirees. The prices, like everything, have crept up, but they’re still wallet-friendly. They’re refreshingly un-trendy, too. Nobody manhandles your ice cream on a frozen rock. I love these places. I have many fond memories of my parents pulling off the road for ice cream, sitting at a simple table on gravel under an awning and enjoying a treat. Simplicity. Contentment.

"Gelati, sorbetti e granite,” it said on the cover. We were in a little bookshop off the Piazza Duomo in Verona. Days of consuming Italian gelato in the hot afternoons had worked so wonderfully upon our imaginations that here we were purchasing a recipe book in a language we didn’t even understand, trying to capture a little of the magical glitter of the Italian summer before it slipped through our fingers. I still have the book — and I still don’t understand enough Italian to follow a recipe. But the pictures convey some of the original magic. Gelato al limone peers creamily out of a yellow bowl, garnished with bristling strips of lemon peel. Gelato allo Champagne is pink and melting, snuggled up to a strawberry. Sorbetto d’arancia is spooned into a hollowed-out orange.