COCONUTS HOT SPOTS — Ryn Cafe, a new ice cream bar in the heart of Thonglor, recreates your childhood experience of tasting and picking out your favorite ice cream flavors — but instead of innocent sprinkles, the cafe tops your chosen scoop with a half shot of the imported craft spirit of your choice.
But just so you know, the boozy ice cream alone will get you drunk.
Forward-thinking entrepreneurial couple Iryn Vongvachjira and Tarin Chiarakul decided turn the first floor of their photography studio into Ryn Cafe, after they regularly had friends over to party there anyway. Tarin, who loves to drink and works full-time for liquor importer Bootleggers Trading, came up with the boozy ice cream idea because he wants to introduce Thai people to craft spirits in a fun way. Meanwhile Iryn’s talent for marketing and design turned the space into a bar, decorated in playful colors, comfortable futons, and stuffed animals to make guests feel at home.
This also means no shoes are allowed inside. So wear some socks without holes.
To stick with the youthful theme, the menus are named after the couple’s favorite childhood cartoon characters. To order, you can taste and pick out an ice cream flavor at the bar and then find your seat. There are alcoholic and non-alcoholic kinds such as Snow White Raised a Cow which is a fairest scoop of milk ice cream. Meanwhile, Ariel’s Sweet Temptation, is a bourbon-based, salted caramel ice cream. (Get it? The ice cream is salty…just like the ocean where Ariel, the Little Mermaid, lives.)
Prices are THB150 for boozy ice cream, THB80 for non-boozy.
Then comes the fun part, you can select your own craft spirit to top off your ice cream from rum, whiskey, gin, vodka, tequila, to mezcal — the list goes on. They sell half a shot starting from THB75, but you can also take the whole shot or have it on the rocks.
I went with their recommended sets, which included a half shot of booze that the bartender had pre-matched with an ice cream. I tried Kan Kluay Mao Vodka (THB220), which is named after the war elephant in the Thai cartoon “Kan Kluay.” The set comes with 15 millimeters of Kai lemongrass vodka with vodka-based ice cream.
Despite fear that the vodka would burn my throat, the mixture was tasty — as if I was having a frozen, creamy cocktail. The vodka-based ice cream actually turned out to be my favorite — it tastes of Thailand, featuring coconut, lemongrass, and pandan while the liquor in the scoop is overall smooth. According to Iryn, a half shot of booze is just the right amount to enjoy with the dessert — too much liquor could give the ice cream the taste of cough syrup.
Next up was the Pink Ranger Say Cheese! (THB150), which is a non-boozy strawberry cream cheese ice cream, served with a half shot of Tanqueray gin. The ice cream itself is high quality, and hits the right level of sourness. When paired with gin, the strong flavor of the ice cream dominates the liquor and is simply enjoyable.
The rest of the boozy ice cream features rum, bourbon, and beer, and when it doubt, you can ask the bartender which liquor blends perfectly with each frozen dessert.
To emphasize the concept of an ice cream bar, Ryn Cafe doesn’t serve cocktails — just straight up booze and boozy ice cream. The bar aims to refresh the menu every four months to serve as what they call “a playground for adults.”
FIND IT:
Sukhumvit 34
Monday – Saturday, 11am – midnight
Editor’s Note: The cafe’s opening hours were updated on March 28, 2018.
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