Turkish ice-cream or dondurma has made its way to Chennai — the second city to serve it after Delhi-NCR — at the newly-opened restaurant BnB Live Grill at OMR Food Street in Navallur and with it, have come the two men partly responsible for bringing it to India: Kashyap and Sonu Kumar.
When I reach for my ice-cream, it wiggles away like a worm but this ice-cream that doesn’t easily drip or melt; that’s milky thick and chewy instead of soft. The nature of Turkish ice-cream is such that it lends itself to various tricks; ones that the ice-cream vendors of Turkey have perfected over the years. It is this art of ‘trolling’ customers that mesmerised Kashyap and Kumar when they first made their journey to the city of Ankara in Turkey four years ago. “It felt like magic... The vendors had such great sleight of hand, just getting ice-cream was one form of entertainment,” recalls Kashyap. What was supposed to be a short trip turned into a two-year stay, where the duo learned the tricks of ice-cream making and selling from Shahin Uftur. They then convinced him to open shop in Delhi.
The stretchy texture of the ice-cream comes from salep. It is a paste made from orchid flowers . Both salep and mastic, the aromatic resin that gives it a distinctive flavour are imported from Turkey. The end product is so firm, you could take scoop out an entire bowlful on a ladle — a trick often used to surprise new customers — without any of it falling down; you often need a knife to slice through it.
Kashyap is in his element while serving; dressed in traditional red jacket and a fez. He slyly hands the customer a double cone, and ladles ice-cream on it. Once filled, he slips it out of her hand, leaving her holding just the empty outer cone. He then ups the performance, balancing the ice-cream on four different cones — so quick, the customer doesn’t know where to look. At times, he even puts a cone inside a customer’s pocket.
Sound is another integral part of the ice-cream serving: Kashyap rolls the ladle as if churning butter, hitting against the container to produce quick percussive beats. Hanging on top of the ice-cream containers is a bunch of bells tied together that Kashyap rings as he twirls the ice-cream ladle around. Every so often, he flips the ice-cream over and shrieks, pranking customers into thinking he has dropped it.
Doesn’t the audience ever get tired of his tricks? “We actually do have customers who straight out say ‘No’, when we start performing,” says Kashyap. “So you have to gauge each customer’s temperament before you start pranking them. Sometimes, there are children, even adults, who get scared or put off by our shrieking.” However, the vast majority seems to enjoy it, and that’s what drives the duo. “It is about playing with the customer, there’s a certain masti involved,” says a twinkle-eyed Kashyap. Kumar agrees, “We don’t just serve ice-cream, we serve laughter.”