Creams Café, St Mary Street, Cardiff
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In the past decade or so there seems to have been something of a dessert parlour explosion. No longer are ice creameries satisfied with simple tubs or cones of ice cream – they’ve gone quite mad, driven by the burning desire to innovate and experiment. Like John Coltrane. But with ice cream. When we first walked into Creams Café on Cardiff’s St Mary Street (a street that’s also home to fellow dessert lunatics Kaspas – a chain – and Barker Gelato from the same team as Cardiff’s famous Coffee Barker and Barker Tea House) the first thing to hit us was the cold. Naturally, if you’re working in a place that serves a lot of ice cream, it needs to be cold. This was something I foolishly overlooked, so bring a jacket.
The staff are eager to tell us about their new menu, particularly the introduction of a bubble pop waffle and frappes. Intrigued, I choose a More Oreo bubble pop waffle and Fr-Ozen frappe. My partner gets a Citrus Chiller gelato tea frappe and a Choc Royale sundae. My bubble pop waffle is brought over relatively quickly, but my manners and societal rules forbid me from starting until my partner’s sundae arrives. Some 10 minutes pass before I realise that the Oreo and cookie dough gelatos in the waffle are going to melt if I don’t get started soon (thankfully the cold temperatures staved off disaster). I then start having bits to at least have it when it was unmelted. Another 10 minutes pass and eventually our frappes arrive, followed by the sundae a couple of minutes later. I then tuck in.
The bubble pop waffle is essentially a bubbly waffle cone filled with gelato, butterscotch sauce and cookie crumbs. While there was nothing to complain about in terms of its taste, it was served in some sort of springy bouncy container that would shake the dessert as you tried to eat it. It was also very hard to eat with a knife and fork and I soon discovered there was no way to eat this and look refined. It was tasty, but little more than a weird gimmick. I think next time I’d go with just the gelato itself (which was very good indeed) or a simple waffle. My partner’s sundae went down better, and the quality of the gelato got very high praise indeed. My Fr-Ozen frappe (chocolate, hazelnut, Ferrero Rocher) goes down well, but it was a little light on the coffee flavour. My partner’s frappe (a mix of lemon and ginger tea with a scoop of lemon sorbet and vanilla ice cream) tasted a little odd, perhaps a little too intense with the lemon. Some people enjoy that, so perhaps that’s one for the lemonheads out there.
In general, Creams Café have a much bigger selection than their rivals, and while it’s just as cheap, it feels a little nicer than the night club atmosphere of others. Personally, I’d miss out on the bubble pop waffle madness and just go for a good old-fashioned gelato, of which they offer many.
Info: www.creamscafe.com
words LUKE OWAIN BOULT