I grew up in a house barren of treats – there was no regular supply of chocolate, snakes, sour lollies or caramels. There was one exception: ice-cream, and I was mostly free to eat it whenever I wanted. That constant, childhood joy was the start of a storied love affair. Later, when I had money to buy my lunch in high school, I would get a one-litre tub, a pair of spoons, and my friend and I would eat the entire thing and nothing else. Sometimes, if we were particularly greedy, we’d split a two-litre tub.
I thought tasting more than 20 varieties of supermarket chocolate ice-creams would be like a reunion tour of my favourite teenage-era bands, an hours-long journey of nostalgia, glee and excess. But my dream shattered in a supermarket ice-cream aisle when my dad, who was with me to help collect products for the taste test, asked: “Is this ice-cream?” The tub was in the ice-cream section, and the packaging showed pictures of chocolate ice-cream scoops. But nowhere did it say the words “ice-cream” or “gelato”.
