When a smooth licorice gelato from the Takapuna Beach Cafe & Store scooped the supreme award at the 2009 national Ice Cream Awards, it set tongues and tastebuds wagging.

Never had a little gelato, made fresh each day and served to salty beachgoers, so brazenly stolen the spotlight at the New Zealand ice cream industry’s night of nights.

The cafe’s owners Jackie Grant and Scott Brown were gobsmacked by the honour, and suspect the kingpins of the industry were out-mastered by a cafe that makes its delicacy only for the store.

“The big manufacturers have the infrastructure to put time and resources into quality, en masse. But we’ve learned that it’s small churners that make better ice cream; we can only make 60 litres at a time,” Grant says.

“They will have to lift their game to beat us now — which has got to be good for the consumer.”

The award judges noted the “increasing quality and variety in the gelato and sorbet categories”, compared to a scarcity of innovative ideas in the ice creams entered. All of the judges described the supreme winner, licorice gelato, as “near to perfect”.

The president of the NZICMA, Deep South’s Barbara Simons, who has churned out the country’s premium vanilla ice cream for seven years running, thinks it’s terrific a boutique ice cream maker won the ultimate award. “It’s great for a small maker to have the chance to beat the likes of Tip Top and Emerald Foods. It gives you a huge boost.”

Tip Top’s managing director Alastair de Raadt agrees that the gelato’s success is good for the industry: “If someone makes a successful product, we recognise it. It’s up to everyone to look at it and say ‘is there something here for us to consider?’”

The biggest compliment other players have paid the cafe’s gelatos and sorbets since the awards is to boldly drop in to try out all of Grant and Brown’s wares.

“We get other ice cream makers popping in all the time to take away flavours; they’re never afraid to say who they are. One woman came in and took a sample of everything to send to her ice cream maker friends in the Hawke’s Bay,” Grant laughs.

This was only the second year the Takapuna Beach Cafe & Store entered the awards — collecting eight medals from nine categories. In 2008, it entered just two weeks after making gelato for sale for the first time, and took home four silvers.

While working in hospitality in China, Brown and Grant had their appetite whet for artisan gelato. When they set up the cafe and store right on Takapuna beach, they figured a quality handmade ice cream would go down a treat with beachgoers, and travelled to Italy to learn the craft. They were shocked to find most Italian gelato was made from a ready-mix paste. In Australia, they found a traditional gelato maker who gave them advice, but no recipes.

Brown admits there has been much trial and error in their specially imported Carpigiani machine, but the gelatos and sorbets — made with fresh fruit and the best of marsala, honeycomb and chocolate by head chef Jo Pearson — are winners. The proof is definitely in the pudding — in summer, they serve around 2000 scoops over a weekend.

“We’ve been approached to manufacture it for supermarkets. But we don’t want to. It’s more fun watching the kids scooping the icecream, or seeing people take their first mouthful,” says Brown.

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