The patisserie-rich suburb of Bandra West has gained yet another new dessert spot in the form of Scoopalicious, a 100 square feet food truck-turned-takeaway kiosk. The ten-day-old ice cream joint is helmed by Roysten Misquitta, founder of the Mumbai Food Truck Society, an organisation of food truck owners, and the Bombay Food Truck Company, which retails burgers, hot dogs and other snacks in Kandivali.
Inside Scoopalicious, which has a bubblegum pink facade, Misquitta has displayed his toy collection of action figures and masks of movie characters like Shrek, Batman, Stormtroopers and the Hulk. His ice creams, which are free of preservatives and are enriched with sugar, honey or jaggery, milk, heavy cream and pure vegetable and fruit pulp, are produced in small batches at a kitchen in Vile Parle. On offer are 32 flavours, of which the more unusual ones such as black sesame, rum cake and fennel are the most memorable. Here are our favourites in descending order:
Black sesame
For a ubiquitous ingredient with a distinctive taste, black sesame is grossly under-utilised in city restaurants and patisseries. Scoopalicious gets a thumbs up for giving it a fitting showcase in the form of ice cream. It’s listed under their ‘out of the box’ flavours along with beetroot and pumpkin pie and is the most experimental of the three. The freckled ice cream sweetened with honey made it to the top for its nutty and mildly smoky umami quality and for being less sweet than some of the others on the menu. Rs50 per scoop.
Pumpkin pie
Spices such an cinnamon and ginger typically found in pumpkin pie are conspicuously left out of this all-season scoop. The ice cream is also pale yellow as opposed to orange, but don’t let this deter you from ordering the delicious treat. Rs50 per scoop.
Fennel
A fistful of fennel seeds is combined with jaggery and heavy cream to deliver this palate-cleansing savoury scoop with a spicy finish owing to the powdered fennel. It’s a tastier alternative to a sugary after-mint. Rs50 per scoop.
Rum cake
A single scoop of this rum-enriched ice cream is the equivalent of a small pour of dark rum. The boozy treat is made using dark chocolate and Misquitta’s aunt’s leftover Old Monk, in which she had soaked plums and raisins for her Christmas cake. Rs100 per scoop.
Banana chips
Kerala banana chips dunked into ice cream sounds like the work of a bored kid playing with food at a dining table. Misquitta’s odd experiment however has some merit. The chips lend crunch and salt to the banoffee-like ice cream that smacks of the fruit and caramel. It’s not in the top rung of flavours because tasty though it is, the ice cream gets cloying after a few spoons. Rs50 per scoop.
Popcorn caramel
Popcorn blended into ice cream usually makes for a textured treat. But our scoop was marred by soggy clumps of butterscotch-like caramel popcorn owing to which our teeth required some heavy flossing. Rs50 per scoop.
Beetroot
Prepared with beetroot pulp, vegetable fat and cream, the ice cream looks convincing. It’s a deep and irresistible reddish pink in colour, but tastes like generic mass-made vanilla rather than the sweet and earthy taproot. It’s the sweetest of the seven we sampled and hence also the one we abandoned the quickest. Rs50 per scoop.
It is our policy to wait at least a week after an establishment has opened before we review it.
Prices include taxes.
Scoopalicious, opposite St. Peter’s Church and St. Stanislaus High School, at the junction of Manuel Gonsalves and Hill Road, Bandra (West). Tel: 98202 15085. Open daily, from noon to midnight. Get directions here.