8 July 2026

Ice cream is so hot right now

It’s a serious business

Were you under any misapprehension that the life of a food critic is easy – all salted butter, white tablecloths, fish sandwiches in Istanbul and considered opinions about oxidised white wine – then let me fail to correct the record. It is Sunday, one of the hottest English days on record, and I am at an ice cream party. Suffering is relative, I know, but I cannot in good faith claim that any of it goes on at an ice cream party. Dairy Eden, lactic Arcadia, the Elysian Fields of saturated fat.

“But Silver Spoon! What is an ice cream party?” Come on, Einsteins – what do you think? Go on, take your time. We piled in to a tiny flat overlooking the canal by Camden, opened a bottle of Crémant (suffering: relative) and stared into an ice bucket full of ice cream containers: caramel, strawberry, the rather avant-garde apple cider vinegar, cherry. To the side were a stack of small paper cups and a pile of tiny plastic spoons, Roman gelateria style. I was glad to have skipped breakfast and lunch, concerned about the calorie implications of such an occasion.

The host is a journalist on a rival magazine, and I am the only New Statesman representative here. But in the spirit of laïcité I can let that go. It is easy to be magnanimous in response to a text message that says “Would you like to come to an ice cream party?”, I suppose. In fact, such an occasion – the juvenilia, the whimsy of it all – might just be enough temporarily to arrest my ambient crankiness. Alas, no dice. I found myself halfway through a mouthful of fig sorbet, arguing impertinently with a stranger about Tracey Emin. There’s someone who wouldn’t enjoy an ice cream party, come to think of it.

Never mind. The host had spent all night making custards – the traditional base of most ice creams contain egg yolks – and then all morning churning them in the heat. This is more physical labour than I have ever done in my life, so I am already impressed. “Italian! Commercial grade!” she chirps, gesturing to a metal box about the size of a small Shetland pony or a very big Labrador. I learn that this item – a hobbit could live in there – is an ice cream machine, and not some poxy amateur operation either. This one is second hand. Google the price of a new one. I’ll wait.

Ice cream is serious business. Just ask the enterprising minds behind London’s “wine and ice cream” bar the Dreamery. It’s in De Beauvoir Town, there are murals on the ceiling, the wine is natural and opaque, and everyone in here is so thin it is hard to believe they have ever had a scoop of ice cream in their life. Or even a slice of bread. And yet! Build it and they will come: east London’s foot-soldiers, determined in their belief that the neighbourhood is still cool. And don’t put this bar’s popularity down to it being July and, well, “ice cream season”. I nearly got trampled to death by this army of mean waifs here in December.

I could chin-stroke all day about the phenomenon: the four ice cream parlours within ten metres of each other in Hampstead; the troubling spate of ice cream “pop ups” taking over this nation’s department stores and high-end high streets; my recent encounter with “toasted milk gelato” (and no I don’t know the thermodynamic laws that would enable one to toast milk, so don’t ask). “Meet the Fashion Insiders Making Niche Ice Cream Cool” one ghastly headline read in Vogue recently.

The world is vast and scary – even food critics know that – and so I suggest this is all some kind of reactionary nostalgia drive, back to a time when the British Isles were not in a state of decrepitude and there were not frequent race riots on the streets. Blah blah, whatever. I suppose if you look to the newspaper every morning only to recoil in horror then maybe you can self-soothe with a scoop of chocolate chip, like you are six. I suggest more grown up coping mechanisms like cigarettes and emotional avoidance, but that’s just me.