The Ice cream Masseuse

D'Onofrio Sublime Ice Cream Bar

I don’t want to mislead you with the title of this post, so I will get right to the point. The ice cream masseuse exists, and I have encountered her many times in Peru.  She is the ice cream server at pretty much any ice cream joint in Peru I have been to, and I do have some feelings of animosity toward her.

Yesterday, since I figured I had already broken my New Year’s resolution, I ate a cone with two balls of ice cream- cappuccino and mango. Instead of using an ice cream scooper, the person used some sort of flat spatula. I saw the server put the spatula in the mango bin and get a nice-sized portion of ice cream.

Just when I thought she was going to put the ice cream in my cone, she put it on the side of the ice cream bin and started massaging it. Yes, she was massaging it and thus shrinking the size of the ice cream she was giving me.

Though thoroughly annoyed, the ice cream was delicious. The ice cream I bought was from a chain called Laritza, but another of my favorite ice cream chains is 4D. Both Laritza and 4D have wonderful ice cream with all the old favorites- chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, etc.- as well as flavors special to Peru such as granadilla and lúcuma.

After encountering the ice cream masseuse this year, I decided today to go for some D’Onfrio, which is another extremely popular ice cream brand in Peru owned by Nestlé since 1997. Most of the ice cream they serve is already packaged (like Good Humor) but is great quality and delicious. I ate the Sublime bar which is chocolate ice cream encased in a hard chocolate shell with nuts. This was very satisfying, but I know that soon again, I will purchase some fresh ice cream and find myself facing the ice cream masseuse.