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| Satisfy My Bowl - Banana Ice Cream with Caramel & Cookie Swirls & Chocolatey Peace Signs |
So,
I am in London, this beautiful historic city on the other side of the
planet filled with centuries-old landmarks and the thought comes to my
mind - where do I get ice cream? And not just any ice cream? Ice cream
made by a company based in Vermont. I suppose British companies could
make good ice cream as well, but I seem committed to trying as many
different Ben & Jerry's flavors as possible so it would be
interesting to see if they do anything special for British taste buds.
It turns out that they do. I am sure we are all familiar with the website listing the flavors available in the US:
It turns out that there is a different website for "flavours" in the UK:
Some
of the flavours are just renames because the American pun might be lost
on British audiences (e.g. "Boom Chocolatta" becomes "What-alotta
Chocolate") So I was on a quest. At some point in my trip, I was going
to find a flavour that was not also a flavor. This actually proved to
be quite difficult. Central London is not filled with grocery stores
and what few stores they have tend to be quite small with small freezer
cases. If they carried Ben & Jerry's, they'd only carry 2-3
flavors. Several places would carry Phish Food, Half Baked, Chocolate
Fudge Brownie... and nothing else. I can eat those at home. So, I
tried looking for larger stores. It turns out there was a larger Tesco
market across the Vauxhall Bridge from my hotel. In there, I found a
flavour not available in the US: "Satisfy My Bowl".
"Satisfy
My Bowl" is was released in the UK last year to commemorate the 30th
anniversary of Bob Marley's compilation album "Legend" on which there is
a song named "Satisfy My Soul". Its not the most British of flavour
themes -- I thought maybe there would a tart-based ice cream with a
crumpet swirl or something but it is a flavour unique to the UK market.
Jamaica as a former colony who gained independence from the Britain in
1962 is a member of the Commonwealth Realm and still recognizes
Elizabeth II as their monarch. So with that logic we proceed with the
review. For listening pleasure here is a recording of "Satisfy My Soul"
to listen to while reading the rest of the review:
As
mentioned before, I had to walk to a Tesco on the other side of the
bridge to get this pint. Being on foot, and knowing that there was no
freezer in my hotel room, I decided I needed to eat the ice cream right
away. So I ducked into a Pret-a-Manger on the way home and grabbed a
plastic spoon and ate the pint on a sidewalk table. That explains the
different look and feel to the photos.
Opening
the pint, you see the the yellow banana base and a couple of the
chocolate peace signs. Digging into the pint, the base ice cream is
both thick and soft. I don't know if that was due to the eating
conditions where I had walked a few blocks and was using a flimsy
plastic spoon. Its possible that it would be the familiar texture I was
normally accustomed to had I been using a metal spoon which was cutting
into cold ice cream which had come right out of the freezer. It was
good though. Like Chunky Monkey the base has a richer banana flavor
more like that of banana bread than of the sweeter banana flavoring used
in things like gummi candies. The caramel swirl provided a nice accent
to the banana. It sort of gave the pint a bit of a bananas foster
feel. The peace signs are basically fudge chunks. The chunks in Chunky
Monkey were rectangular shaped while these were pill-shaped. The
effect of adding a chocolatey kick to the pint was the same. The peace
sign embossed on the pill was purely decorative but was a nice touch.
What was hard to notice was the cookie swirl. I had to look to make
sure they were there. I think they may have added to the texture of the
pint but their flavor did not stick out. Interestingly, in the UK,
they provide provide percentages for their fill-ins on the side of the
pint, the caramel swirl is 9%, the cookie swirl is 6% and the peace
signs were 4%.
I
liked this pint. I might not fly to the UK just for this, but as long
as I'm here I'm glad I had it. It is basically Chunky Monkey with
caramel instead of nuts but thats a good variation because as I said
before it gives it a bananas foster feel to it. Add some rum &
spice flavoring to the cookie swirl here and that's we'd have here. I
wonder why this was not released in the US?
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