All the ice-cream in the world
It’s a dish that reminds us all of simpler, happier times and now there’s more choice than ever before
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Nothing is more evocative of summer than ice-cream. From gelato to soft serve, kulfi to dondurma, sorbet to a good old Magnum, few foods hold such globe-spanning appeal. In 2023 alone, the UK got through 320 million kilograms of the stuff — and, apparently, the market is growing year on year.
Now, I’m no statistician but if anyone happens to observe a sharp peak in consumption over the past few months, it may have something to do with Hafiz Juice Corner, an unassuming, Pakistani spot in Ilford, east London. For those of you without a TikTok account, Hafiz has recently dominated social media thanks to its selfie-ready, soft-serve cones.
As its name suggests, the shop stands at the corner of Ilford Lane and Madras Road. Alongside its juicing apparatus sits a bank of soft-serve machines, churning out a range of flavours from vanilla to chocolate, banana and pistachio. The mango, however, is the one that’s really blown up, attracting millions of views and hour-long queues.
When I visited early on a Thursday afternoon in mid-August, I feared a familiar sequence of events would play out: watch video of viral spot; travel to viral spot and try what it has to offer; be disappointed by viral spot; leave and resolve never to fall for internet hype again. As it turned out, the only problem I encountered was discovering that Ilford is home to several Hafizes and struggling to find the one I wanted to patronise. Well, they do say that imitation is the best form of flattery.
The first big positive was that we had to wait only two minutes before being served. Once we reached the front of the hole-in-the-wall queue, we looked at a piece of paper mounted on the wall inside a clear plastic folder and displaying the day’s soft-serve flavour options. All priced at £2, those available were marked with a tick and those not were crossed out.
The high point was the mango soft serve itself. Refreshing, light and airy, it’s a winning concoction. The ice-cream sits atop a basic wafer cone — a humble base for the towering orange swirl. Made using fresh mangos, it is sweet, zingy and almost weightless. I could easily have eaten three of them.
Mango ice-cream is enjoying a moment in the sun elsewhere, too. For the past few years, when the much-prized South Asian kesar mango is in season, Bake Street — a cult Stoke Newington cafe with no indoor seating — has featured both soft serve and sorbet on its menu. Availability and timings are published via Instagram Stories and stock often sells out fast, leaving disappointed customers to try their luck again another day.
Bake Street’s owners, Amirah and Feroz Gajia, have also collaborated with the popular Filipino ice-cream parlour and bakery Mamasons to create new summer flavours for July and August, available in Mamason’s London stores. July’s offering was a miso chocolate hazelnut ice-cream, while August hosts a pineapple and peach vegan sorbet.
Back in Ilford, just a few doors down from Hafiz, I stumbled upon Lahori Kulfi & Falooda. Inside, the walls are filled with sepia-toned photographs and art depicting scenes from a city many believe to be the culinary heart of Pakistan. I order the khoya falooda (£6). Cubes of khoya ice-cream — a rich dairy flavour popular in South Asian desserts — are submerged in sweetened boiled milk, nuts, cardamom and vermicelli. It’s seriously sugary and a few mouthfuls were enough for me, but it instantly took me thousands of miles away to warmer climes.
The sense of nostalgia at Lahori Kulfi & Falooda runs through many of the capital’s increasingly diverse diasporic ice-cream parlours. Perhaps that’s because ice-cream is such an innocent, childhood pleasure and reminds us all of simpler times.
In the middle of the North Acton industrial estate in west London, Levant Book Café transports customers — many of whom are Syrian — to the streets of Damascus with booza, a frozen dessert made with sahlab and mastic, the latter of which lends a distinctive stretchy quality.
In addition to the traditional variety, fragranced with rose water and topped with pistachios, Levant offers a range of flavours including ashta (clotted cream), berry and karak chai. You select your flavours — displayed in traditional glass cabinets by the kitchen — and they are expertly arranged into a beautiful floral pattern. A large serving costs £6.
Inside, families sip glasses of mint tea and tuck into halawet el jibn and syrup-soaked, cheese-filled knafeh. The surrounding walls are covered with poetic quotes, written in Arabic. One translates as “I live in London, but Damascus lives within me.” Outside, men play chess and smoke shisha to the trickle of an ornate water fountain.
While booza’s distinctive chew can be something of an acquired taste, a stone’s throw from Bond Street in central London, the artisanal Lebanese ice-cream parlour Festok is doing a great job of converting the masses.
I visited on a Saturday evening and found the small store rammed with customers and a line of more than 30 people outside. The demographics of the queue said a lot about London: Korean bloggers filming their first mouthfuls; Lebanese visitors craving a taste of home and an array of people in between.
Further west, in Fulham, a lockdown-era ice-cream hobby has flourished into a fully fledged business. In 2021, Suzanah Banna started to sell tubs of Lebanese booza, made in her home kitchen. Now her company, Mama Booza, offers 16oz tubs (£10) for pick-up and delivery to a growing number of customers in the capital. The venture has proved such a success that Banna’s son, Karim, has now launched the operation in Dubai.
I opted for the pistachio flavour and, after some liaison via WhatsApp, showed up at a black door on Fulham Road the next day to collect it.
As I tucked in, seated on the kerb in the 30C heat, I felt like I could be in the middle of Beirut. Then, the near collision of a Lime bike and a double-decker bus brought me swiftly back to London. Lovely London, where all the ice-cream in the world is only ever a few tube stops away.
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