In search of the best Glacerie in Paris: La Combine
44 Rue de Lancry, 75010, Paris
It was a Saturday afternoon, I was wandering aimlessly (or flâner as the French call it) when I noticed a sea of glaces around me. I followed the sweet smell of homemade waffle cones and stumbled upon La Combine. If JJ Hings wants us to connect with our inner child La Combine is telling us that ice cream is for adults. This soft serve specialist offers an increasingly fashionable duo: ice cream and natural wine. A lick of this, a sip of that.
La Combine is all about the soft serve, also known as Glace à L’italienne. This translation tickles me as by all accounts soft serve is a North American invention so not sure where the Italienne comes in (except in French anti-American feeling but that’s for another article). Soft serve is essentially whipped ice cream. You take a gelato base and inject it with air thanks to a specialist machine which then spits it out in a long tube much like an uncooked churros. The result is a huge pastel turd.
This perfectly formed poo melts in your mouth like a little cloud of dairy sweetness. This is soft serve like you’ve never seen it before. Forget a cardboard cone and sprinkles out the back of a singing van, here it is gourmet. It’s an artisanal take on the 99 and it’s exciting to see people elevating this, let’s be honest, less respected member of the ice cream family.
I don’t think it’s possible to get a bad soft serve but I do think it is easy to get a bland one. Fortunately La Combine are creative with their flavours. They offer 4 parfums, served 6 different ways. It’s a weekly changing menu- the first time I landed on Peach and Chocolate sorbets and Amaretto and Buckwheat ice creams. The following week I also tried their Orange Blossom and Tahini. Each flavour is served individually or you can opt for the parlours namesake- La Combine which is the two swirled together. As I wanted to taste them all I took the Peach and Amaretto combine and the chocolate and Buckwheat combine. Tahini and orange blossom I enjoyed individually and that’s because I teamed it with glass of rose to try the lick’n’sip experience.
There is something overwhelmingly gentle about this ice cream, soft texture, soft flavours. It’s all very delicate, very subtle. The stand outs were Orange Blossom and the Apricot sorbet. You don’t need to now that everything is made from scratch with real fruit, you can taste it. It’s like licking a creamy compote. It wasn’t overly sweet and had a rich, at times zingy, apricot flavour without any of the artificiality that comes with fruit essence. The Orange Blossom was perfectly balanced. It’s a flavour that can so quickly become overpowering and reminiscent of a cheap bath bomb but this was fragrant and refreshing.
My only dampener would be the thing that initially excited me the most; the ice cream and wine combo. Though I love the concept, I didn’t think that the flavours were particularly complimentary (though admittedly that may have been my poor choice of wine). I’m still in love with the idea though… Imagine sipping some almond liqueur with your Amaretto ice cream or trying a glass of Sauternes with your Fleur d’Oranger glace. Heaven.
Finally, a plea more than anything else, please can we bring back the Flake? Call me English but a soft serve just doesn’t feel right without a finger of chocolate poking out of it. Maybe we could come up with a modern twist, a bobo flake if you will? A tahini and dark chocolate flake? a Matcha and Kombucha flake?? I don’t know but soft serve doesn’t feel complete without it.
I recently went to Ripley ice cream (in Ripley believe it or not) and they served ice cream with a stick of fudge (they also did a flake, but a stick of fudge?! Genius). More sticks of things in ice cream, I say.