There’s Only One Flavor of Ice Cream to Have for Breakfast
There’s Only One Flavor of Ice Cream to Have for Breakfast
Dulce de Leche in Buenos Aires
It was just before twelve and I hadn’t yet eaten, so I suppose it was breakfast. No clouds were out and the air was humid. After spending half an hour strolling through the heavenly chaos that is El Mercado de las Pulgas on the edge of Buenos Aires’ Palermo and Chacarita neighborhoods, I decided to stop at the next empanadería to break my night’s fast.
I didn’t need to walk far.
I read the neon sign across the road and just like that, my sweet tooth awoke and my craving for meat wrapped in pastry was a long-lost memory.
I’d never been to an ice cream parlor like this one before, a traditional heladería, brought from across the Atlantic by Italian immigrants in the late 19th century. I stepped into the 1930s-style parlor and discreetly approached the only customer, an old man who looked to be in his late seventies, perhaps even eighties, to take a look at which flavor had dragged him to this parlor before noon. I walked to the counter where a man was ready to take my order and asked if that was dulce de leche—caramel with an Argentine twist, a national pride—slowly melting in the old man’s wafer cone.
“No, amor,” the man told me. “It’s super dulce de leche.” I looked up at the menu board hung behind them. The list was endless. But tucked between the dulce de leche and the dulce de leche granizado, there it was: the super dulce de leche.
I asked what the difference was between the three, trying to sound as Argentine as my fresh-off-the-boat accent would let me. He explained that granizado has with chocolate chips while super has dollops of actual dulce de leche stirred into the ice cream. “We make the best one in town,” he said. Chamuyo, please. I’ve heard that one before. He continued, “How long have you been here?”
“A few months.”
“Oh, you’ll be coming back. Just like him.” he pointed to the old man. “We have been around for seventy years and he has been coming here for the super dulce de leche since he was a child. You need to try it.”
Super it was. The loyal viejo couldn’t have been wrong for that many years. The metal lid came off the tub and the ice cream man dug his arm deep into the freezer, gently filling up my polystyrene quarter-kilo bowl with creamy scoops of bronze brown. Three plunges into the freezer later, my bowl was full and placed on the scales. “Listo,” he said, wiping the edges of the bowl with a towel and delicately sellotaping the lid on.
I thanked him and sat on the bench outside. On that summer’s morning I couldn’t have followed better advice than starting the hot and humid day with super dulce de leche. The man behind the counter was right. A chamuyero—smooth talker—he was not. He really does have the finest scoop in the city.