Dispatches from the Frontline #2: Gaborone, Botswana

This just in from Clare Gupta, LME's Africa correspondent.  Thank you, Clare!

Southern Africa is not a region known for its good ice cream. For the most part, the ice cream you find at grocery stores or served in restaurants is made from vegetable, not milk fat, giving it a strange aerated mushy quality. That said, there are a handful of exceptions, and the homemade gelato served at Sanitas, a tea garden in Botswana’s capital city Gaborone, is one of them.

Sanitas is a lovely native plant nursery that I stumbled upon in the otherwise dusty, dreary town of Gaborone.  Their outdoor café is situated around a gorgeous old enormous fig tree, with tables nestled between palm trees and other interesting sorts of plants. In addition to serving a tasty lunch, they also serve HOMEMADE gelato! Given the dearth of ice cream options here, I was shocked to discover that not only did they serve gelato but that it was prepared in-house.

That'll do.

It comes either on a cone or in a pretty glass dish with various accompaniments such as black cherry sauce, vanilla-flavored home-baked cookies or fresh strawberries, straight from the nursery’s garden. I did what I always do, which is order a scoop of gelato on a sugar cone (ice cream is just not as satisfying when it's not licked from a cone) with toppings on the side—in this case, the fresh strawberries. I tried out the chocolate flavor and while it was not show-stopping, it was pretty up to snuff as gelato goes, with just the right balance of creaminess and iciness that good gelato should have.

What made it mentionable were the fresh strawberries—the mix of a crunchy sugar cone, sweet-tart strawberries and cool chocolate flavor absolutely hit the spot.

Next time if I can resist the strawberries I’m thinking I may go for the option of a scoop of vanilla bean topped with a splash of Amarula—South Africa’s deliciously-flavored liquor made from cream and berries from the native Amarula tree…yum.

Professional Foray #1: The Odeon's ice cream cart

Last night my friend Helen and I went on my first professional tasting trip last night, to the Odeon's ice cream cart.  Thank you to my friend Maisie for sending the tip, by the way.  Helen, who had graciously arrived for dinner carrying a six-pack of Baked by Melissa nano-cupcakes, cheerfully accepted that our dessert was going to have more courses than our dinner.

What a delicious little gimmick.

The Odeon's ice cream cart is right in front of the restaurant, underneath the striped awning.  The management has sweetly put several benches out on the sidewalk on West Broadway, so ice cream customers can enjoy the sight of strolling Eurotrash and Tribeca families, attractive down to the toddler, while they savor their cones.  The waffle cones are house made, as is the ice cream, which is made fresh every day, three flavors per day, including butter pecan, strawberry, rocky road (I will be going back expressly to sample this flavor when the time is right), pistachio and banana vanilla wafer.

Last night there was good news and bad news.  The bad news was the mint chip, which had an overtly herbal peppermint flavor that tastes more like a stick of gum or a swig of mouthwash than ice cream.  The good news was the cookies and cream, one of my favorite flavors, which had huge, generous chunks of homemade chocolate cookies.  The cookies were large and dry and crumbly enough to stay crispy and provide real textural contrast to the ice cream, although they didn't have the lardy Oreo-style cream filling that makes commercial cookies and cream sometimes strangely satisfying (I'm talking about when that cream filling starts coating your mouth because the cold of the ice cream means the fat molecules aren't melting as swiftly as they should be.)  The coffee was also excellent news - the flavor, in its sweetness and delicacy, reminded me of Haagen Dazs, but the texture was softer and lighter, and nicely melty.  $4 for one scoop, $6 for two.

145 West Broadway, (212) 233-0507, www.theodeonrestaurant.com/ (call for flavors of the day)