So you’ve been to every one of the coolest ice cream parlours in town and you need an alternative scoop to Scoop. Well here’s one for your list. Chin Chin is London’s (and Europe) very first nitrogen ice cream parlour. Yes that’s right, instead of freezer-stored ice cream, these guys make theirs by cooling with nitrogen vapours instead. The best part is that it happens right in front of your eyes… while you wait!

I first read about it on gourmet traveller (which is an awesome blog) and thought this whimsy looked a worthy gimmick. It’s only £3.95 for a scoop afterall. And it is literally very cool. In fact so cool that safety glasses and gloves need be adorned by the ice cream makers to protect against cold burns, when they unload liquid nitrogen from the storage tank. This visually visceral concept is the brainchild of husband and wife team of Ahrash Akbari-Kalhur and wife Nyisha Weber, who have partly borrowed inspiration from the molecular journeymen of gastronomy in Adrià and Blumenthal. Actually it is worth reading this article by Victoria Maw about couple which appeared in the FT a couple of weeks ago.

So on to the wacky sciencety bits: Using nitrogen to make ice-cream is a much quicker route to freezing, since nitrogen boils off at a much lower temperature of -195.79 °C. Ahrash has theorised that in this short time, ice crystals are prevented from forming, and thus ensuring a smoother, denser, sexier resultant product, ergo happier customers. Q.E.D.

The shop looks like a mad scientists’ lair, bringing back memories of Bill Nye, TV’s preeminent science dude. I loved that show. Pyrex glass beakers, measuring cylinders (and maybe even pipettes!) to white lab coats are both decorative and practical; for a moment, I was zapped back into my uni lab making up another batch of anti-misting polymers, to splatter across the walls. As you’d expect, the ice cream is made to order, and part of the experience is watching the process occur right before your eyes.

That means snappy happy Kang, (if you don’t want spoilers, don’t scroll down!). There is something incredibly rewarding watching ice-cream being made in front of you. The stream of nitrogen fumes definitely adds a certain dramatic effect too.

Ok here goes…

First we choose from one of the three available ice-creams. Vanilla and chocolate are the main stays, the ‘special of the day’ on my visit was lychee. More flavours will become available in the future, Ahrash mumbled dehydrated peanut butter as he explained the concept to me.

Goggles on. That’s the liquid nitogen tank, note it is from CyroService, I wonder if Air Products sell them to ‘private’ citizens too..

And we’re off! Streaming liquid nitrogen…. the fumes – I assume – are of nitrogen boiling off, since -195.79 °C relative to 20 °C is alot warmer. It’s like pouring out water when the ambient temperature is above 100°C – it would start boiling off straight away…. I think I’m a Chemical Engineer.

In goes the nitrogen to the mixer and within seconds….

….we have nitro-ice cream!

That’s not where the magic ends however, we move on to the next counter to have our ice cream finished with various toppings. Each of the glass beakers holds something edible. There’s a variety of nuts, candied sugars and such.

Here, Nyisha is meticulously garnishing my vanilla ice cream with a few well-positioned honeycomb pieces.

Vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce and honeycomb…. looks amazing right?

Lychee and rose water ice cream with rose crystals, toasted almonds and raspberry coulis. Check out the little translucent spoon!

This has got to be one of the most handsome ice creams in town no? Chilled art…

The futurist look about this place is so visually appealing. If you don’t fancy the ice cream, they also do cupcakes. I didn’t try one, but it looks great too.

So the five million pound question, is it smoother, denser and sexier? I think so. The better half and I enjoyed it immensely. Hey this place is alot of fun, and I think it is worth a go, especially when summer is still around. The owner has pretty interesting ideas in the works for his chin chin lab, for one, he told me that he is collabing with other like-minded creatives to craft a fuller experience, possibly special events as well. He explained some kind of multi course meal idea with nitro blasted consommé and such….but I shouldn’t fuel a rumour mill so we’ll just have to wait and see what appears in the horizon. In the meantime, the future of ice cream has landed in Camden.

See even more photographs on my flickr stream.

The Gist of It

The Chin Chin Laboratorist
Nitro Ice Cream Parlour, £3.95.
49-50 Camden Lock Place
Tube: Camden

Did you enjoy reading this? You can subscribe to the Newsletter. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the RSS feed.

All text and photography on this blogpost is copyright and belongs to Kang Leong, LondonEater.com. If you repost this without my permission, bad things will happen. So please don’t do it.

28th July 2010 Update: I am indebted to Michele for this, if you want to visit Chin Chin Labs, you need to note their opening times: ” Just to save everyone else some trouble, I learned the hard way that Chin Chin is closed on Mondays! Unfortunately I couldn’t find details on their website or anywhere. Also I believe I saw that their shop closes on weekdays at 6pm. So I’ll probably be aiming for a journey back up over the weekend..
Also just a note on location – contrary to what Google Maps seems to show, the shop is not actually on the waterfront – it is just in that interior corridor, the one that starts at Gilgamesh and continues down alongside (but outside) the market area.”

Following my scoop! post a few weeks ago, I went on abit of an ice cream rush before summer ended. Ciao is smack in the centre of Leicester square..ok that’s an exaggeration, its more like behind Leicester square and yes that headline is not a joke, they really do spaghetti ice cream here. Got your attention yet? Cool, keep reading…

As promised: spaghetti ice cream 

There are actually two menus here.  A ‘standard’ café menu that feature sarnies, pastas, you know, the basic stuff. But I mean, you’d come to cafe ciao not for the savoury food,but for the ice cream. This place is abit of an ice cream heaven. The colourful menu is a photographic odyssey of sweet creations including tiramisu with mascarpone and dairy ice cream. Archie comics style banana splits, complete with hot fudge sauce. And of course, spaghetti made completely of chocolate ice cream strands.

I ate fried eggs ice cream

I ordered the fried eggs. Its made of two half peaches (for the yolk) and vanilla ice cream (as the egg white), with a chocolate wafer stick in the middle… topped with some very juicy glazed cherries. Yeah it was good.

Yogurt Ice

Jennie wanted to be healthy so she ordered the yogurt ice cream, with lots of whipped cream on top and walnuts and fudge sauce…. its debatable whether this is actually more healthy. If you’ve never had yogurt ice cream before, it tastes abit like sour vanilla ice cream.

Melted chocolate drink

No this is not the melted hot chocolate, which they do here. Instead this is the ‘normal’ hot chocolate. To be honest, its nothing really special, but you know, a good hot chocolate is a good hot chocolate.

Thoughts and more thoughts and extra thoughts

As of writing (4th October 2008), the temperature has come right down. I think it’s about 10C outside, brrr… I’m not cold-resistent at all. In fact, I shiver when Im in the cold, even though I don’t feel it. Maybe I need to grow more bodily hair. Well, not much I can say about desserts, anything with lots of sugars generally taste good (if you like sweet things), they put an interesting twist on things here, so it’s a nice place to settle down. Prices are reasonable and portions are huge. The woman who runs the place is very warm, like a loving italian mummy making sure all her kids are well fed. So what are you waiting for? Get the melted hot chocolate and some fried eggs…made of cream. 

Hot weather can mean only one thing after spending hours pounding the streets of London, ice cream.

the five families of gelato

We’re fortunate to be blessed with family run businesses setting up shop here in the UK. Especially in London where you will find lots of italian gelato shops and most of them are located quite centrally too. Scoop is in the heart of Covent Garden. It is a little hidden away, on one of the side streets behind the Marks & Sparks outside the station. It’ll be abit of a treasure hunt, but once you find it, its like you’ve struck a gold mine!

In case you didn’t know, gelato is Italian ice cream made with all the goodness of milk & cream. The hallmark of gelato is the dense and creamy texture, I would say almost sticky nature. This is opposed to something like soft ice which is light and whippy. Gelato is generally made with less than 55% air, thus giving it the luxurious feel and making it, in my opinion the king of ice creams.

the scoopy story

A quick gander at their website and philosophy : “Scoop introduces for the first time in London the pure italian gelato experience.”

Wow, these guys sound serious, their ice-cream is not just cold milk & honey, its an experience. With such a bold selling point and the fact that the sun is melting me by the minute, I had to indulge in the pure Italian experience.

lets talk flavours

There are a lot of flavours to choose from that generally fall under either the sorbets or the milk based stuff. Among the sorbets you’ll find a pretty formidable list including pear, pineapple, watermelon, melon, blueberry.

The gelato selection feature a few famous italian puddings such as tiramisu and panna cotta. Some of my favourites are fior di latte, cookies and cream, triple chocolate and stracciatella.

Do have a quick flick through scoop’s flavour page here. They give a pretty insightful look at what goes into their product and what each flavour really means, its clear ice cream flows through their veins.

So how good is the Italian experience?

I got to to admit, it’s pretty damn good.

Generally speaking, the ‘base’ of the product is very rich and creamy, but it won’t make you queasy. The flavours are all very nice and does indeed taste ‘real’ as opposed to being artificially too sweet. Comparing against the benchmark Haagen Daz line, Scoop gelato is a little lighter, more balanced and less sweet and for some strange reason, it taste livelier, like it’s indeed more ‘fresh’.

Today I had the green mint flavour. Look at how vibrant that green is! It taste exactly what mint should do, its just so nice.

Scoop also doubles as a cafe too, I never got round to trying the cafe bit, but something interesting, is that they make ice cream cakes, and they deliver. Something to consider for any upcoming celebrations perhaps?

Bottomline: It’s so good, if you scoop that special someone you’ve been after all this time – she might just say yes.