Get your portion of delicious ice cream in the city
Summer might be coming to an end, but there is still plenty of time to savor ice cream, the treat associated mostly with the warmer seasons. But of course, nothing can stop you from enjoying it any time of the year.
Although I have never actually tasted a real Italian gelato in the country of its origin, I have lately become a big fan of this wonderful treat, as more and more gelaterias of different chains have opened in Kyiv in the last couple of years.
There are two famous types of Italian ice cream, gelato and sorbet. Gelato is authentic Italian ice cream made from milk, egg yolks and sugar, combined with various flavorings. The flavors can come in fresh fruit, chocolate, flakes, nuts, small confections, cookies, or biscuits. The other type is fruit-based sorbet, made from fresh juice, iced fruit, or berry puree, most commonly wild strawberry and raspberry. Also there is yogurt-based ice cream, classic gelato with chocolate and hazelnuts, fruit mix with chocolate, pear with cottage cheese, etc. The main advantage of gelato is that it contains less fat than common American-style ice cream. Gelato is softer than other ice cream and melts faster, since its ingredients are not homogenized (blended) together. Generally gelato has 35% less than air, which gives it a denser texture.
The newest ice cream parlor in Kyiv, Gelateria Roma, so far having only one shop in town, offers 40 kinds of ice cream. Apart from all of the stuff mentioned above, it carries famous Italian classics such as Stracciatella with crispy chocolate crumbs, Tiramisu with mascarpone cream, Frutti di Bosco with mixed berries, and coffee-flavored Cappuccino. There is also a variety of sorbets made out of cranberries, oranges, pineapples, melon and much more.
Gelateria Roma also has several types of ice cream unknown to the Slavic palate, such as Zuppa Inglese (“English Soup”) made with liquor and biscuit. There is nougat ice cream with candied fruits, and even ice cream with oatmeal cookies. And the most unusual ice cream has mastic resin as key ingredient. Children love the neon-blue Azzurro.
The regular price for a 70-gram portion of any gelato is Hr 10. Also, they can make milkshakes from your preferred ice-cream. If you wish to take your dessert with you, in Gelateria Roma they put it in a special cool container for Hr 10, which makes it possible to carry the cold dessert for up to two or three hours, without having to put it in the fridge. What’s more, at Gelateria Roma you can order ice cream cakes from any ice cream you prefer and have it layered with biscuit, cookies and fruit.
Despite a similar-sounding name, La Gelateria Italiana is a very different place. It offers about 30 flavors of ice cream. Just recently they added to their assortment some new light fruit sorbets, so now you can choose from wild berries, blueberry, strawberry, green apple, cherry, raspberry, pineapple and other types of sorbets. Besides, Hayatt and Radisson SAS hotels order citrus sorbets from La Gelateria Italiana for their fancy restaurants. Apart from sorbets, the gelato parlor offers traditional ice cream in the following flavors: chocolate, coffee, hazelnut, pistachio, strawberry, vanilla, white chocolate, and – my favorite – Tiramisu. They, too, have unusual flavors of ice cream, such as green tea, combinations of lemon and pine nuts, peach and cream, orange and bitter dark chocolate, milk chocolate and rum. Yum!
The ice cream here is a bit pricier – Hr 13 for a scoop in a waffle cone (100 grams) and Hr 23 – fro two scoops. Dessert also come in a special container. They will also make a milkshake from your preferred gelato for the price of Hr 20, and will make you a kilo of ice-cream cake for Hr 130. Also recommended are their cold ice cream-desserts.
The Leonardo chain of ice cream parlors only uses exclusive Italian technologies and recipes. They say Italian experts often visit their local production facility to make sure the local manufacturing meets their standards. Leonardo’s sorbets should contain at least 60 or 70 percent of natural fruits and berries. Right now, Leonardo makes about 70 types of ice cream at Hr 8 per scoop. But only about a third of it is offered at their shops – the rest can be made upon request. The order-only menu includes some exotic flavors that are Leonardo’s very own specialties: there is ice cream flavored with champagne, liquorices, salmon and even garlic. The local ice cream makers say they don’t add anything into their gelato, only fresh dairy, sugar and flavors – no thickeners, no anti-freezing agents, and nothing artificial.
Gelateria Leonardo is also famous for its selection of Semifreddo, Italian semi-frozen desserts, typically ice cream cakes, half-frozen custards, and fruit tarts. The desserts have the texture of frozen mousse. My recommendation is to try the forest berry Semifreddo based on vanilla ice cream with red berry filling, or pineapple Semifreddo with strong chocolate and nut flavor and soft sour pineapple souffle inside. And don’t miss their traditional Catalonian dessert called Crema Catalana, made with custardy creme brulle and a caramelized crisp sugar topping.
Once new and cool, Baskin-Robbins’s ice cream is not quite as popular as it once was. The most central Baskin-Robbins’s kiosk that used to be located at the Globus shopping mall closed down, apparently unable to compete with the Gelateria Italiana, just a few steps away. However, you can still try the famous Baskin-Robbins with its iconic pink spoons at several locations in the city, namely Metrograd, Karavan and Kvadrat shopping centers. Their selection of ice cream flavors has also decreased overtime: there are no more sugar-free sherbets. Unlike the Italians who don’t normally mix more than two flavors, Baskin-Robbins mixes everything: chocolate with almonds and fruit candies, orange with raspberries, and so on. For an ultimate Baskin-Robbins experience, try their traditional original flavors, preserved since the first Baskin-Robbins’s shop opened in 1945. Those are Chocolate Chip vanilla ice cream loaded with bittersweet chocolate chips, the Mint Chocolate Chip, Pistachio Almond, the Baseball Nut – a vanilla ice cream filled with cashews, and Love Potion ?31, with white chocolate and black raspberry swirls, loaded with raspberry–filled chocolate hearts and chocolate chips. A single scoop will cost you Hr 9.
The leaders of Ukrainian ice cream making also claim to use Italian technologies. There are two Ukrainian brands of soft ice cream: Asorti (Assortment) and Lakomka (Sweet Tooth), which are sold in small pavilions in the city’s busiest spots. Asorti has dark blue kiosks that traditionally offered two flavors of low fat ice cream, coffee and lemon, which you can buy on their own or mixed (Hr 4,50 for 100 grams). Recently they added two more flavors, vanilla and blueberry, but they are not quite as popular as those traditional yellow-brown cones.
Lakomka makes a number of flavors, including chocolate, lemon, vanilla and strawberry, which they can glaze with chocolate, if you wish. Lakomka’s ice cream is both fattier and sweeter than Asorti’s coffee-and-lemon dessert. In Lakomka, you can have your ice-cream served in a waffle cone or paper bowl. The second type of container allows you to mix any flavors and choose syrups, nuts or chocolate sauce toppings.
However, you don’t even need to seek cafes and restaurants to try a real tasty Ukrainian ice cream there. In the summer, ice lollies, chocolate-glazed ice creams, and cornets are widely available anywhere you go. Ice-cream lovers are recommended to sample Belaya Noch toffee ice-cream, Ptashyne Moloko (“Bird’s Milk), a delicious chocolate-glazed souffle and the Truffle Cornet – a good choice for chocolate fans.
Gelateria Roma (17/21 Baggovutivska, Promenada 12 Luhova, Karavan);
La Gelateria Italiana (Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Globus 12 Lugova, Karavan);
Leonardo (2 Bessarabska Ploscha,1 Lysenko11 Yaroslaviv Val);
Baskin Robbins (Bessarabska Ploscha, Metrograd,12 Lugova, Karavan20 Hnata Yury, Kvadrat6 Hetmana, Bilshovyk).
