A street vendor churning a long stretchy mass was someone we encountered in Shinsaibashi in Ōsaka during 2011. The signage suggested the mass was Turkish ice cream, or dondurma, but none of the hoards of people walking past were interested in what he was selling, and so neither were we.

I’d forgotten all about this encounter until four and a half years, later, when Hakiki Turkish Ice Cream popped up in Newtown as being the new place for trying chewy ice cream, or dondurma.

They specialise in dondurma and baklava. I first visited on a 40 degree day back in January – the kind where you sweat just by being outside – so only the dondurma was on my mind.

They have many Turkish influenced flavours with pomegranate, baklava, grape molasses and tahini, turkish delight, as well as your more standard flavours like cacao, raspberry and strawberry, watermelon and strawberry.

On my first visit with H and K, I get the baklava and watermelon and strawberry in a medium cup ($6.00). I’d heard good things about the baklava and was suitably impressed. It’s a honey based ice cream with bits of filo pastry and nuts throughout. The layers of filo pastry give an addictive crispness to the chewiness of the ice cream. Even on a hot day, I found the creaminess of the ice cream refreshing and not too heavy. But perhaps that was helped by the refreshing watermelon and strawberry gelato. Compared to the baklava, the watermelon and strawberry was chewier – the chewiness is addictive!

On my second visit with D, N, T and DT, we get the bowl with five flavours ($13.00). It was the better option with 5 of us, with a small cup being $4.50.

Our five flavours were turkish delight, watermelon and strawberry, burnt caramel, tahini and grape molasses and baklava. I’ve already tried the watermelon and strawberry and baklava so –

• Turkish delight (top) is a beautiful pastel pink with a subtle, but genuine and pleasant rose flavour. They sell rose water at the store, so I can only imagine that they achieve this flavour with it.
• Burnt caramel (bottom left) is a vanilla based ice cream with ribbons of burnt caramel throughout. It was recommended as a flavour you can’t go past and while nice, it was the least interesting of the flavours.
• Tahini and grape molasses (bottom right) is a sesame based ice cream with ribbons of grape molasses throughout. It has a beautiful nutty flavour with hints of sweet grape flavour akin to the taste of balsamic vinegar. H and I don’t usually see eye to eye on foods, but we both agree that this is a winner.

Without the heat clouding my brain during my second visit, I remembered to try their baklava. This is the pistachio baklava. It was generous with nuts but tasted a bit too dense with the filo.

And, of course, N and I try their turkish apple tea. It’s a tea that’s equal parts sour and sweet in its apple flavour and its sourness is intensified here by the accompanying ice cream.

D and T opt instead for a Turkish coffee. We were a bit confused as to how to drink this coffee, so the waitress kindly explains that you drink water to cleanse your palate, then sip the coffee, and take bites of the turkish delight to sweeten the taste of the coffee. Importantly (although T does not heed to this part), it’s an unfiltered coffee so you don’t drink the sludge at the bottom.

The first sips of the coffee weren’t all that pleasant – it was intensely gritty, like muddy water. But after letting it settle for a few minutes, it was a pleasant black coffee. That said, though, we’d still prefer it filtered.

Hakiki could easily become a regular haunt if it weren’t so far away. But, dondurma may be just the ice cream for hot Australian summers with its a higher resistance to melting than ordinary ice creams that do not use salep and mastic.

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2017

A visit to Hakiki Turkish Ice Cream is always an enjoyable experience with thoughtfully developed Turkish-inspired flavours that can’t be had elsewhere in gelato form, let alone in dondurma form.

A small cup ($5.00) comes with two flavours, and the staff are happy for you to sample before committing to a flavour in a cup.

Their Caramelised Fig & Walnut delivered on the sticky fruity sweetness of caramelised figs with a chewy dried cube of fig in each scoop giving an extra fig flavour, while the walnut was pleasantly nutty and the very slight bitterness associated with walnut skin balanced out the sweetness of the fig.

The bright notes of rosewater in the Turkish Delight was a pleasantly palate-cleansing flavour. Each scoop had a chunk of red toffee like candy, which I’d thought was Turkish delight but was chewy and sweet without a rosewater flavour. The texture of the Turkish Delight ice cream had much more chew than the Caramelised Fig & Walnut.

The texture of the Turkish Delight ice cream had much more of the chewiness of dondurma than the Caramelised Fig & Walnut as seems to be the case with their less creamy flavours.

A later visit saw us not being able to go past the Turkish Delight and pairing it with another floral water flavour: Orange Blossom. The orange blossom flavour was far less pronounced than the Turkish Delight, with pops of noticeable floral flavour coming from the intensely orange swirls and the candied orange rind. Overall, it tastes like a vanilla ice cream with refreshing and light orange swirls.

We try another two baklavas after a peek at their pastry cabinet.

This is the Sour Cherry Baklava ($4.00). The layers of pastry were deliciously buttery and moist with the sour cherry jam, which was pleasantly sweet and not at all sour.

And because I enjoy their tahini and molasses ice cream so much, I try their Tahini and Molasses Baklava ($4.00). This had an intense savoury nuttiness from the sesame, although it was much drier than the sour cherry and would’ve benefited from being more syrupy.

For some reason, I thought their Rosehip Tea ($4.50) would not involve a tea bag. That it did for that price was disappointing, but I’m glad to see that they at least use Dogadan, a Turkish brand whose Apple Tea I enjoy immensely. This rosehip had pleasant earthy flavour with a gentle acidity that was balanced by the sugar cube, recalling the flavour of beetroot.

Hakiki Turkish Ice Cream is located at 1/63-71 Enmore Rd, Newtown NSW 2042