Were you under the impression that the life of a food critic is easy – salted butter, white tablecloths, fish sandwiches in Istanbul and considered opinions on oxidised white wine – then let me not set the record straight. It’s Sunday, one of the hottest English days on record, and I’m on an ice cream party. Suffering is relative, I know, but I can’t claim in good faith that any of it goes on at an ice cream party. Dairy Eden, Lactic Arcadia, Elysian Fields of saturated fat.
“But Silver Spoon! What’s an ice cream party?” Come on, Einstein – what do you think? Go ahead, take your time. We huddled in a small canal-view flat near Camden, cracked open a bottle of Crémant (suffering: relative) and stared into an ice bucket full of ice cream containers: caramel, strawberry, quite avant-garde apple cider, cherry. To the side were a stack of small paper cups and a stack of small plastic spoons, Roman gelateria style. I was happy to skip breakfast and lunch, worried about the caloric implications of such an occasion.
The host is a reporter at a rival magazine and I’m the only one New statesman representative here. But in the spirit of secularization I can let it go. It’s easy to be generous in response to a text message that says, “Want to come to an ice cream party?”, I guess. In fact, such an occasion—juveniles, the fiction of it all—might be enough temporarily to arrest my ambient obscenity. Alas, no dice. I found myself halfway through a bite of fig sorbet, brazenly arguing with a stranger about Tracy Em. There is someone who would not enjoy an ice cream party, come to think of it.
It doesn’t matter. The host had spent all night making custards – the traditional base of most ice creams contains egg yolks – and then all morning churning them in the heat. That’s more physical work than I’ve ever done in my life, so I’m already impressed. “Italian! Commercial grade!” she chirps, gesturing to a metal box the size of a Shetland pony or a very large Labrador. I learned that this item – a hobbit could live there – is an ice cream machine, and not some amateur poxy operation. This is second rate. Google the price of a new one. I will wait.
Ice cream is serious business. Just ask the enterprising minds behind London’s ‘wine and ice cream’ bar, Dreamery. It’s in De Beauvoir Town, there are murals on the ceiling, the wine is natural and dark, and everyone here is so thin it’s hard to believe they’ve ever had a scoop of ice cream in their life. Or even a slice of bread. And yet! Build it and they will come: the pedestrians of East London, firm in their belief that the neighborhood is still cool. And don’t put this bar’s popularity down to being July and, well, “ice cream season.” I was almost trampled to death by this army of evil here in December.
I could touch my chin all day about the phenomenon: the four ice creams within ten meters of each other in Hampstead; the disturbing wave of ice cream “pop-ups” taking over this country’s supermarkets and high-end high streets; my last encounter with “milk-toasted gelato” (and no, I don’t know the laws of thermodynamics that would enable one to make milk-toasted gelato, so don’t ask). A ghastly headline read on Vogue recently.
The world is big and scary – even food critics know it – and so I suggest it’s all a kind of reactionary nostalgia, back to a time when the British Isles weren’t impoverished and there weren’t frequent race riots on the streets. Blah blah, whatever. I suppose if you look at the paper every morning only to recoil in horror, then you can probably calm down with a spoonful of chocolate bars like you’re six years old. I suggest to adults coping mechanisms like cigarettes and emotional avoidance, but that’s just me.
One thing I can tell you is this: I was right. It’s impossible to suffer at an ice cream party.
(Further reading: South Dublin: where even grasshoppers have a superiority complex)
