COCONUT HOT SPOT — Last week when I visited Icedea I sat down to what I thought was a plate of well-done grilled steak, served with fries and cheesy toast.
Except I didn’t.
The “Well-Done Steak” I ordered had 0% beef. I was at Icedea, an icecream restaurant.
This is confusing, I know
Ice cream at Icedea is made in all the bizarre flavors you could possibly imagine. While the classic chocolate, vanilla and strawberry are available, there’s also exotic fruits, spices, and even the unimaginable, like my “steak.”
And they’re not blazing trails. Experimental ice cream flavors are in vogue these days as a new-wave creative creameries are inventing their very own original flavors.
In Bangkok Icedea is at the forefront of this iced innovation and their menu features such novelties as Tofu, Sunflower, Mushroom, Thai Jasmine Rice, Raspberry Red Wine, Lemon Beer, and so on.
If this isn’t enough to get you excited, keep in mind that Icedea takes its ice-cream game to the next level. Not only is it concerned with how the food tastes, but it also puts a lot of work into how it looks.
Surrounded by a number of cool art cliques in the BACC, Icedea is in many ways itself a studio showcasing edible artworks. Aside from serving walk-in customers, this creamery also caters to bigger-scale orders of tailor-made designer ice cream and desserts, which can made to your personal specifications.
Some standouts include the “Steak,” the “Tonkatsu,” and the “Bana-OH.”
The “Steak” (THB159) is made of Cookie-and-Cream or White Cracker piecrust, topped with a thick layer of ice cream and coated with chocolate-caramel syrup. Depending on how you would like your steak cooked, the ice cream flavors will be of different flavors. With “Medium-Rare Steak,” your “meat” will taste of brownie and pink-milk ice creams; with “Welldone Steak”—creamy Hazelnut Chocolate; and with “Fillet Steak”—Banana Caramel. All Steak orders are served with a savory-sweet Parmesan toast, caramelized banana sticks (that look just like fries), and a side of a fresh strawberry and whipped cream. When combined the dish hardly looks like ice cream.
Icedea’s “Tonkatsu” (THB145) is a dish with the ice cream disguised inside a crispy layer of bread flakes. It is crunchy on the outside, and miraculously creamy and icy on the inside. You can choose one of the four flavors—Vanilla, Brownie, Japanese Melon, and Green Tea—for your ice cream filling. My pick was the Japanese Melon, which turned out to work very well with the crispy breaded skin.
And then I had a “Bana-OH” (2 pieces for THB150) as my “dessert course.” Unlike the two large previous dishes, this one was simply a banana-shaped ice cream, coated in yellow to finish with an extra layer of chocolate dipping. You can choose from four flavors: Strawberry Froyo, Tokyo Banana, Matcha Green Tea, and Triple Chocolate. Unless you order the Tokyo-Banana-flavored BanaOh, this thing tastes nothing like an actual banana; it just looks amazingly like one.
If you are in for only a small dose of sweet, Icedea also serves its ice cream by the scoop (THB49)—in which case you will have a lot of fun choosing from the plethora of flavors available daily at the shop. The selection includes Foy-Tong Waffle (waffle and Thai egg-based dessert), Lactobacillus Jelly (Yakult and fruit-flavored jelly), New York Cheesecake, Green Tea and Red Bean, Ferrero Rocher, Apple Crumble, Black Forest, Kao-Tom-Mud (Thai rice-based dessert) and many more originals that you won’t find anywhere else.
All in all, I wouldn’t say the ice cream here is the best I’ve have ever tasted, but it’s certainly the most creative ice cream place I’ve ever been to.
FIND IT:
4th Fl. Bangkok Art and Cultural Center, opposite of MBK
Opening hours: Tue-Sun 11:00am-7:00pm
Tel: +66-89-834-5950
