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photo H. Vibhu

Ice, ice baby Go adventurous with ice creams. Choose from a yummy range

As the afternoons gets hotter, an ice cream shop with a name like Minus 24 beckons…tempts, tantalises. And once you have negotiated your car into that elusive parking space, it is an ice cream that will cool the senses. The ice cream store is divided into two – the AC section and the non-AC section – the platform and the bogie.

Nursing niggling colds and throats threatening to get sore we step into, what we thought would be the cool confines of dessert shop – the platform it is. It really is in terms of the temperature. It is unfair, but maybe that would make us appreciate our ice creams better.

Calling Minus 24 an ice cream shop is unfair, there are slushes (concoctions made of crushed ice and fruit syrups), fizzo floats (basically fizzy soft drinks), mocktails, dessert shakes among other sweet things.

There are warm, hot things of the snack kind in the form of instant noodles and snacks such as sandwiches. So if you are hankering for something warm after (or before) your ice creams or whatever it is that you opt for there is tea and coffee. As far as coffee goes there is variety in the form of mocha chino, cappuccino and cinnamon. Cinnamon we say, “Sorry it is not available!” says the helpful shop assistant. Mocha chino it is.

The names of the ice cream are Hollywood inspired – names such as ‘Eat Me If You Can’, ‘Strawberryman’, ‘Men In Brown’, ‘There’s something about chocolate’, ‘Its raining coffee’, ‘Twister’, ‘Figgy Potter’, ‘Return of the Kulfi’ – are inspired and hopefully original. Reading the menu is entertainment in itself. There is one, two, three, four and five scoop depending on how much you can load up on ice cream. We get bold and decide on ‘Eat me if you can’ – five scoops of ice creams (two each of vanilla and chocolate and one of butterscotch – nuts, chocolate paste and hot chocolate fudge) and ‘Figgy Potter’ – four scoops (two of vanilla and one each of strawberry and orange).

And then they come. ‘Eat me if you can’ is not too hard to go through and same goes for ‘Figgy Potter.’ The ice creams were, well ice creams, nice. All those visions of yummy desserts, melted. Where was the gooey hot chocolate fudge? No strong flavours of chocolate, which was muted by the vanilla and butterscotch. Same goes for the other, so so. Not too bad, nice on the palate. The most expensive ice creams are the five scoop kinds priced at Rs. 60. Everything else is under Rs. 60. In the AC portion, there is a proportional increase in the prices and there is code of behaviour for youngsters – be discreet, in short behave. The store is open till midnight, and offers a 15 per cent family discount after 7 p.m.

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