Black Vanilla the Artisanal Gelato Shop in Greenwich recently teamed up with fellow Greenwich based Meantime Brewery to make some new flavours for their shop. This gelato shop was started by a husband and wife team who wanted to make a natural product that they could happily feed their kids.
The 2 new flavours were Meantime Chocolate Porter Black Cherry Verigato and Meantime Raspberry Wheat Beer Sorbetto. I went along to their shop to taste these new flavours.
The shop is along the stretch of road that leads to the Greenwich Market. They don’t have a massive neon sign outside so look for the discreet little name board hanging over the door.
How they make Gelato
Being a Gelateria, they make a vast variety of different flavours too. The ice cream is made on the premises with no artificial ingredients. The charming shop manager showed me how they make their gelato in the specially imported Italian machines. They make about 38 trays or about 200 litres a day. They use locally sourced milk which is mixed with natural fruit flavourings and churned in the machines to add air and increases the volume, which results in the gelato.
On to the tasting, firstly the Raspberry Beer flavour was made with some added raspberry purée and the beer. It tasted a bit too beery for me but others loved it. The chocoloate sorbetto is a chocolate sorbet laced with ribbons of the beer made into a sauce. Even though this was meant to be a sorbet, it was rich and choclatey. Loved it.
They have the usual flavours like strawberry and vanilla but one that stood out being glaringly blue was the Smurf flavour. This banana flavoured ice cream is a “must have” in all gelateria’s in Italy and is a surprisingly popular top seller. THe blue colouring is actually natural and it comes from a flower, probably the same one that we use in Malaysia for colouring rice.
Black Vanilla have recently won 2 more Great Taste Awards for their Fortnum & Mason Green Tea Sorbetto and Vanilla Gelato with Woodford Reserve Bourbon Salted Caramel.
If you have never been to Greenwich, there is much to see including the Cutty Sark, the Observatory, walk on the Greenwhich Meantime Meridian and see the green laser that shines along this at night.
Then drop in for some gelato at this shop. Black Vanilla has 2 branches, one in Greenwich and one in Blackheath.
Black Vanilla
5 College Approach
Royal Borough of Greenwich,
SE10 9HY
That ice cream looks lush
I am with you on the strawberry and chocolate, didn’t like to first one but adored the latter.