August 2017
When I was in Colombia in the summer of 2017 I tried a really innovative ice cream format that I had never seen before.
The brand is Waves, and the outlet is situated in one of Bogota’s coolest residential districts. Waves provides an infinite number of possible ice-cream flavours, allowing total personalisation.
Here is how it works. First you chose your base mix – ice cream, yoghurt or low sugar (Stevia sweetened). I chose ice cream. Then you have to choose your flavour. There are ten menu recommendations but if you are feeling creative you can specify unlimited combinations of fresh fruit, chocolate, confectionery, cereals and sauces. I chose the Banana Boom – fresh banana and Nutella.
A small amount of mix was poured onto an ultra-cold plate (-24C), there were three such plates in action.
As the mix froze special knives were used to chop the banana and the Nutella whilst scraping the ice cream mix off the plate and working the mixture into a cohesive frozen whole.
Once this was achieved, the mix was scooped up from the plate in large curls and deposited into a paper cup. You got about 6 large curls per portion.
Chocolate sauce was added et voila !
And it worked brilliantly. Banana ice-cream never tasted so fresh and the Nutella came through well (the Hershey’s chocolate sauce would have been better replaced by some Joe and Steph’s Salted Caramel sauce but that’s another story). Not much overrun but the product was still creamy to eat and not heavy or icy. My daughter’s custom-made combo of Oreo biscuits, fresh strawberries and Nutella was equally impressive.
I really think Waves are onto something here. The theatre involved in the custom preparation of each portion is involving and the end product tastes fantastic. The outlet has only been open a couple of months so it is early days and they probably need to speed up – each tub took around 4 minutes to produce which apparently leads to quite a queue on warm summer evenings. But it is very on trend – upmarket ice-cream, handcrafted, fresh ingredients, infinite variety and a very superior tasting end product. Together, both ice creams cost a grand total of 20,500 pesos (about £5)
An internet search revealed a similar company with outlets in Thailand (the source of this way of serving ice-cream) and Spain ( www.icewaveshow.com/en/ ). Who’s going to bring it to London ?
