Local lolly! Bengaluru is scooping up India-flavoured artisanal ice-cream

BENGALURU: Film actor Puneeth Rajkumar was spotted enjoying a family dinner at fusion Indian eatery Rock Salt recently. He ended the meal with artisan ice-creams in anjeer and mango flavours. The actor is spot-on with the cool trend circuiting this summer in Bengaluru.

Artisan ice-creams or boutique gelatos are scooping up regional Indian flavours at eateries.

They are talking flavours like Kashmiri saffron, Himalayan Pink rock salt, South-Indian filter coffee and aam-panna (cooling raw mango drink).

Celebrity chef Abhijit Saha of Rock Salt says, “With about 25% of our sales coming from Indian-flavoured artisan ice-creams like paan and raj bhog, we are now experimenting with new crop like gulab jamun, saffron and curry leaf for our menu.”

It was aam-panna ice-cream that made it to the recent IPL catering for VIPs and players by the Taj West End. “Bengalureans are looking for new ice-cream flavours to be served at social gatherings. Popular flavours include kesar-chandan, masala chai, nolan gur and falooda,” says the hotel’s executive chef Sandip Narang.

The current ice-cream list at The Oberoi-Bengaluru has flavours in South-Indian filter coffee, jaggery and jamun with activated charcoal for set menus.


(Representative image: Thinkstock)

Dessert parlours too are talking in Indian vocabulary. Smoor chocolate lounge serves guava and coconut flavours. Indian flavour ‘thandai’ is one of the three best-sellers at Artinci, a professional kitchen in Whitefield that went live in January and sells artisan icecreams through players like BigBasket, UberEats and Zomato. Thandai, meant to be a monthly special, made it to the permanent menu due to high demand.

The brand uses only regionally sourced ingredients. “Indian spices and dark chocolate come from Kerala. Instead of Spain, saffron is sourced from Kashmir. We use organic Indian rose water. For cold brew coffee flavour, we use beans grown sustainably in the Western Ghats,” says owner Aarti Laxman Rastogi, a former HR professional turned gelato-maker.

According to Euromonitor India, the ice-cream market in India has grown at a CAGR of 17.2% from 2012 to 2017 and expected to grow at 9.9% from 2017 to 2022.

Vikram Basavaraj of Redberrys ice-cream studio (Basavangudi and Magadi Road) quit his job as a mechanical engineer at Accenture to become a trained gelato chef from Italy. He says, “Social media and rising health consciousness have propelled Bengalureans to make the shift from factory to artisan ice-cream. India has a vast range of flavours which also serve the purpose.”

He recently added nostalgic Indian flavours like Brahmin’s coffee, Horlicks and Bournvita, and a take on the Bounty chocolate to his menu.

What is Artisanal Ice-Cream?
Artisanal ice-cream is house-made, preservative-free and uses only natural ingredients with no artificial flavours, stabilisers or emulsifiers. Made in small batches, it has a shelf-life of maximum of eight weeks as opposed to 6-24 month shelf life of industrial ice-cream.