Cup or Cone Zones: The Frozen Delights of Sydney
MAN IT'S A HOT ONE.
From a Flake impaled Mr Whippy cone to the $42 quenelle, from sliced Viennetta served in crystal glasses or an Oreo McFlurry which is no longer served flurried (seriously what’s that about) – there is simply nothing finer than a sweet, cold handful of something fun on a hot Sydney day.
I’m not here to predict the end of the world for a second time, nor am I attempting to ride my own coattails in forcing accidental mild virality. The Red Rooster line has been on my mind again and as summer approaches I feel myself reaching for the icy cup (and/or cone) to mitigate the humidity of this cursed season. But which icy cup (and/or cone) is worth crossing the border for? Does the Red Rooster line have any baring on ice cream locales? What will the polygons tell us?
At time of writing there are four absolutely brazen frozen delights Sydneysiders are enamoured with: froyo, açai, gelato and what I’m calling specialty flavoured gelato.
These cool cup or cone zones will be expressed by the following stores:
Yo-Chi (froyo) - affluent tang
Thirsty Monkey (açai) - unbeatable texture
Gelato Messina (gelato) - everybody’s Italian friend
Ice Kirin (specialty flavours) - the Chinatown trinity
Let’s see it:
And let’s view the map again, unfettered by the ambience of Gelato Messina:
Distinct zones across a horizontal axis have been revealed. Why is Sydney so fragmented? Or is this a celebration of diversity? Partitioned diversity? I have no idea.
Yes, Haikiki, Kariton Sorbetes, Duo Duo, Mapo, Kakigori Kaiji, Ciccone & Sons, Freo, Gelato Franco, Pep’s Italian Ice and friends exist, but there aren’t enough stores to form a polygon on a map. I see you, I just can’t triangulate you! Please expand for consideration here. Until then, we’ll keep to my elected establishments. And yes, being a Sydneysider I have visited all four this year.
Yo-Chi - Froyo
(Before we begin, please note that ‘tangy’ is my favourite flavour.)
I became sentient during the Sydney froyo boom of 2010. I was awakened, I was taken, I was enlightened for I had access to paper cups of tangy luxury whenever I pleased. A WowCow Darlinghurst run after Spectrum party nights was the real Sydney indie sleaze scene.
Sadly, the froyo saturation in the early 2010s ended much how you’d expect after a typical Sydney trend boom – a few stores, and eventually entire chains, began to close. RIP Moochi Cabramatta, 2014.
But Melbourne based Yo-Chi, founded in 2012, has incited an unexpected yassification of froyo in Sydney from around 2023. Subsequently their stores keep mostly to the affluent north and beachside suburbs – is there exclusivity here? But I liked froyo before it was 💅🏼! Newtown is as westie as Yo-Chi gets as this piquant precinct exists entirely north of the Red Rooster line.
What’s crafty about the pull-yourself-a-swirl-then-serve-your-toppings-but-pay-by-weight business model, besides the fact eager consumers are oblivious to the cost until a humbling realisation at the register, is that anything on trend can be easily included on the self-serve buffet bar. On my last visit I distinctly remember a dubious bowl of runny pistachio paste towards the end of the line. I only say dubious because its viscocity made it easy to over-drizz, additionally the the serving spoon was massive. Massive like the massive one-size-only, bucket-like cup you begin your potentially pricey adventure with. I see what you’re doing Yo-Chi but I got that AYCE buffet efficiency mindset.
Perpetual collabs with Pistachio Papi, Tony’s Chocoloney (what was that I said about normie status?) and RD Peanut Butter will keep this froyo both forever relevant and profitable – the heavier the partner ingredient, the more costly the cup. Genius. And as of today I’m into their social media presence very much.
My tip: the only worthwhile froyo toppings have been, and always will be, popping pearls and chewy mochi. If you’re holding brownie pieces, cheesecake chunks and cookie dough in your little tongs - bruh, think of those G’s (grams). There’s a reason Yo-Chi haven’t partnered with a soufflé pancake brand or mousse or Rice Bubbles or anything that isn’t dense. The weight of the world should not reside in your froyo cup. That froghurt would surely be cursed.
Froyo remains one of my all-time favourite foods (THE TANG!), and I will not be shamed if and when my cup exceeds $20. For customisable tartness and lessons in self-restraint Yo-Chi is worth crossing the border for.
PLEASE NOTE: A Yo-Chi has opened in Penrith (Sydney’s west) since writing this. Let’s consider this store an outlier for the sake of my convenience.
Thirsty Monkey - Açai
From Bondi Fruitologist niche health food to heads from The Area enjoying a late-night bowl beyond Bankstown shisha, açai’s second coming has me baffled. I’m not trying to be coy, I welcome anyone’s knowledge here.
Australia’s first açai movement in 2008-ish materialised in the form of smoothies, or more aesthetically, smoothie bowls. Gorgeously adorned flatlay fodder, a thick, blended smoothie, its viscosity requiring spoon not straw, occasionally served in a half-coconut shell, decorated with chia seeds, sliced fruit and flowers. Like a Cobb salad for Byron Bay. Now, that thick but flat iteration has evolved into a phallic soft serve drenched in Biscoff sauce and granola.
Thirsty Monkey, the pioneer of new-wave açai and unbeatable texture, forms a pleasing polygon spanning from Liverpool, Paramatta, to Marrickville and Wentworth Point. While they may not like it, I consider Wentworth Point part of the west but with a water view, despite the suburb barely crossing the Red Rooster line into the North. From health food to habibi food, majority of the açai area falls west of the Red Rooster line and into The Area quite literally.
Sydney’s 2024 açai boom is a tale of many small businesses. Below is a rough map of açai stores in south-west Sydney against Thirsty Monkey’s presence. Are these clusters evidence that there remains plenty of room to hustle with a food truck? We’re not here to take part, we’re here to take over, after all. Is the demand for açai so immense it warrants this many purveyors? Yes, apparently. The high competition has led to innovation however - iJuice in Chullora even has its own açai drive-thru.
With business escalation entwined to the trend (see graph above), it would be unfortunate to see these independent operators go the way of the froyo circa 2014. Soft serve açai is clever enough to become an object of permanence though, purple neon sign sales are probably through the roof.
But Alana… don’t these stores just… throw the same ingredient… into a soft-serve machine? And yet each store demands their texture is the most unbeatable? This is the most disconcerting aspect of Sydney’s nouveau açai story. A.P.B.R.E.A.M. (Amazon Power Buckets Rule Everything Around Me).
With froyo’s anchorage in the east and açai now the cultural phenomenon of Western Sydney, it seems both frozen delights have traded geographical positioning after a decade, for some reason. Personally if I want the antioxidant hit I’ll pay the blueberry punnet tax. I also find trend sauces (pistachio, Nutella et al.) more masking than complimentary to the almighty purple swirl because I demand that tang.
The cognitive dissonance surrounding a post-gym soft serve is hectic. Western Sydney rejoices – assoiiii açai is worth crossing the border for.
Gelato Messina - Gelato
This is Sydney’s great and accessible gelato.
I grew up in an era of New Zealand Ice Cream Co. and that one Häagen-Dazs at Circular Quay. Gelatissimo stores were all over the place too with their promising garnishes of half passionfruits and slick chocolate drizzles, but much like a poorly made Greek salad in a not-Greek-owned suburban chicken shop in the 90s, those cold, silver receptacles were often all top and no bottom at the time. Real suburban Westfields stuff. Hey, remember Kernels?
Messina is everywhere, and by everywhere I mean it’s the only store explored here (and here) with an outlet in The Shire. Messina’s vast acreage suggests no discrimination in relation to the Red Rooster line whatsoever. Messina favours the inner-city, likely due to its Darlinghurst roots, and has since expanded with equality. We all know what the mushroom cake looks like – Messina is Sydney lore.
This is a brand generous with their inclusions (big hunks of cake in their more creative flavours for example, I love wet cake), and in keeping with my tangy is my favourite flavour truth, the yogurt caramel flavour rocks. If this is the new gelato benchmark, we’re doing pretty good*.
The new Messina Marrickville HQ is as bustling as any açai spot on a Friday night, so good for them. Gelato Messina is worth crossing the border for.
*I don’t want their dank social media person to come for me
Ice Kirin Bar - Specialty gelato
Moon cakes, beans, gradients of tea, mochi-wrapped scoops, matcha matcha matcha and pineapple buns. This is pretty dang not so sweet, if you know what I’m saying. We’re on the cusp of medicinal gelato!, says I, a sugar syrup guzzling Eastern Mediterranean. Osmanthus Oolong flavour? C’mon now, this is impressive stuff.
I’m not trying to be an asshole relegating foreign flavours to an ethnic recess by referring to anyone’s craft as ‘specialty’. Haikiki with its stretchy grape molasses and tahini dondurma and Kariton Sorbetes’ ube halaya (I’m literally eating it right now) are in the same tasty boat. Basically, any superb frozen dairy trade concocting iced cream flavours inspired enough to make a nonna hail Mary and perhaps faint upon her plastic-swathed couch is categorised here. Pissing off Italians is very funny to me, so I hold every store noted in these paragraphs in the highest esteem.
As I was saying, this is Sydney’s iced cream Chinatown trinity. Ice Kirin Bar forms a neat triangle with its vertices extending to each of the ‘towns: Burwood, Chatswood (where 42% of the residents have Chinese ancestry) and the CBD’s Regent Place (only minutes away from Haymarket). I almost feel the Red Rooster line is an unnecessary consideration in this region. No chicken wars, no jet ski jokes, no green juice or smoothie supremacy.
On my most recent Ice Kirin Bar visit I ordered an exquisite black sesame flavour (I didn’t go full bean, but instead full seed instead, I hope that’s ok). My only qualm about the place is that I cannot read the what the flavours are in this cursive typeface which is so necessary when there’s no hokey pokey in the cabinet, please Ice Kirin Bar please it’s so stressful squinting even while wearing glasses in the line only to arrive at the counter when I still have no idea what to order and I simply refuse to umm and uhh and God forbid ask for a sample while there’s a queue behind me!!
My date at the time agreed. But he’s since blocked me, the first person to ever do so, so maybe his general thought process shouldn’t be called upon as hard evidence (nothing pairs with ice cream quite like unchecked maladaptive behaviours 😋). Please believe, I am an efficient woman, and this label font choice is a legitimate challenge to decipher in a high-pressure-busy-Saturday-night situation.
A quick edit before I schedule this thing for the morning, I’d like to note that rather than easily leaning into serving pistachio goop, Ice Kirin Bar produce three dedicated regional pistachio flavours across their stores. That’s cool as hell.
Despite moments of typeface panic ordering, including my recent sublime black sesame scoop, Ice Kirin Bar is worth crossing the border for.
Before I get hammered in the instagram comments, here are some omissions and further considerations:
Yogurberry?
Yes, Yogurberry exists. But Yogurberry is too expansive for entertaining commentary.
The Ben and Jerry’s belt
This chain is too mega for sincere Sydney-specific consideration above but interesting enough for a modest acknowledgement. Curiously, Ben and Jerry’s locations follow two existing patterns by 1) shadowing the Red Rooster line until arriving at the CBD, and 2) comfortably residing within Gelato Messina’s warm embrace. This doesn’t hold as much cultural significance as it does commercial. The BJB (Ben and Jerry’s belt) supports my theory that Sydney’s cup or cone zones exist on a horizontal axis. If Gelato Messina is the baseline, then the Ben and Jerry’s belt is the backbone.
The Cold Rock ridge
Intrigued by the absence of… many things… in The Shire, an ancient memory spoke to me as I slept. Cold Rock Cronulla! I investigated, or rather Googled ‘clod rock sydney’ only to uncover the only vertical-ish zone under investigation today, the Cold Rock ridge.
Excusing Penrith, St Marys and Minto as outliers, the Cold Rock ridge encompasses many of our motorway corridor suburbs, plus Cronulla. The Ridge continues vertically along the east coast from Rutherford to Wollongong. These aren’t quite remote areas but coastal towns and classic road trip pit stops. I’m not sure what this all means except that this Australia-wide chain follows no rules and does as it pleases. “Today, Cold Rock is and remains the largest 100% Australian owned and operated ice cream and treats business”, quoth their about page. Who knew.
What do we know so far?
It’s simple: man, it remains a hot one and thus all frozen delights are worth crossing the Red Rooster line for. There’s no chicken apocalypse (yet) but the globe is certainly warm as. Lucky I have a tub of Kariton in my freezer and enough açai options to sustain me until wintertime. The only decision that lays before is me is whether I want Biscoff or Bueno sauce in my cup (and/or cone) before the earth bursts into flames.
Amazing! Absolutely amazing! I am also behind your deep dive into food location conspiracy theories hoping it’ll investigate the hard corners of Açaí dominance in western Sydney and how it’s creating a new gang-fight.