Movenpick, Kingston Foreshore*

* I attended Movenpick as a guest

For the uneducated (like I was), Movenpick is an international ice cream brand. It’s one of those franchises people are obsessed with: queuing up outside for hours, sampling all the flavours, and coming back the very next day to try it all again.

And that’s the story of Siddharth Mahabal and Aneeta Singh. While living in New Zealand they didn’t just eat Movenpick but they lived it, and on moving to Canberra figured if there wasn’t a store here already then they had to work hard to bring one here – including opening it themselves.

They did just that. At the launch of Movenpick we heard from the head office how the husband and wife team would regularly contact Movenpick to ask them to consider opening a store in Canberra. They were nothing if not persistent! The good news – for Siddharth and Aneeta, as well as for all of Canberra – is that it worked.

Canberra’s very first Movenpick store is located on the still-expanding Kingston foreshore, down the end where you’ll find Molto Italian. It’s a corner store, luxuriously fitted out with leather couches in the traditional Movenpick colours of black, red and white and curved edges everywhere I look. It’s classy and homely.

One of the best parts of Kingston foreshore is being close to the lake. Movenpick’s taken the bold step of having an outdoor eating area. Given Canberra winters average about eight months, I was skeptical whether this would be successful but Movenpick has been able to stretch out the awning to provide a covered area and they also have these beauties:

They work a treat and have me shrugging off my jacket.

But we’re here for the ice cream! So what’s on offer?

The first thing you need to know is that Movenpick offers free tasting of all its flavours. And there are a lot. And some of the flavours you can’t quite properly grasp until you taste them, so don’t be shy. I try blueberry cheesecake, cinnamon, raspberry sorbet doubled with Swiss chocolate to make a Cherry Ripe-style duo, caramelita, espresso (as a non-coffee drinker this almost blew my head off – the flavour is strong), maple walnut, mint chocolate, chocolate brownie… you get the idea.

Siddharth isn’t just the owner of Movenpick Kingston, but probably one of Movenpick’s greatest ambassadors! And he consistently serves with a smile, even at my 10th tasting.

The process of creating Movenpick ice cream is something of a feat. Ingredients are sourced from all of the world – Madagascan vanilla pods, cocoa beans from Venezuela – and brought to Switzerland where the ice cream is prepared centrally, before being shipped to its stores around the world. You can’t doubt the Swiss for wanting to achieve consistency in quality product, even if I do wonder a bit about overall efficiency.

Movenpick ice creams are creamy. Really creamy. And the flavours come through strongly – they use natural ingredients and there are no artificial additives, colours or flavours – just like our own local Frugii. My favourite flavours are cinnamon and blueberry cheesecake (these are two separate flavours), but the tasting helps me uncover flavours I was convinced I wouldn’t really like and love: caramelita (with both caramel ripple and caramel bits) and the white chocolate, too.

I start with a double serve of cinnamon and blueberry cheesecake in a cone. But it turns out to be that my only love is sprung from my only hate. Or, to be less dramatic, the delicious blueberry cheesecake (which I love) is slated to replace the cinnamon ice cream (which is beyond devastating!). If you are reading this, Movenpick head honchos, you are making a mistake. The cinnamon is so, so good. (If you think you might like even kind of like the cinnamon I urge you to get in quick before it’s gone forever!)

Cinnamon and blueberry cheesecake. The cones are made on site.

While I’ve been on my Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-esque taste of everything on site, Boyfriend has gone ahead and ordered a plate of the Movenpick macarons: macaron shells filled with ice cream and served with cream and a dash of chocolate sauce. It’s pretty darn decadent with chocolate, salted caramel and pistachio ($12.95).

I think this is one of the best value for money offerings that Movenpick has: the macaron shells are high quality and the servings of ice cream sandwiched in each is essentially three different scoops. I’m not sure what it is about the pistachio but I’m not a fan and neither is Boyfriend – but otherwise the tastes are very, very good.

(Do you like the plates? They’re by Robert Gordon Australia.)

Siddharth insists we try the chocolate waffles. These, along with the apple strudel, are items which obviously have a particular appeal during winter. The waffles are prepared on site according to the Movenpick recipe and they’re made to order so they come out hot and fresh with another two big serves of ice cream and brilliantly-red, sweet strawberries with lashings of chocolate sauce.

This is another very decadent dessert. The waffles are crisp on the edge and overall very cakey in texture. Noting most of my waffle experience has been with frozen ones that you microwave that are essentially hollow inside, this takes me by surprise. Keeping the ice cream and waffles separate keeps the ice cream from melting and lets you choose how you want to eat them, but my recommendation is to pile the ice cream on the waffle so you get the cakey bits, the crunchy bits, the cold bits and hot bits all in one mouthful. Yum! (Save the strawberries until last so you can end feeling healthy.)

While Frugii will always be #1 for me, I’m impressed with what Movenpick has to offer, especially given it’s a franchise. The personal effort from Siddharth and Aneeta can be felt throughout the store and the ice cream flavours are spot on.

(Please keep the cinnamon ice cream, Movenpick. It really is very, very good.)

Date: Saturday, 7 May 2016

Where: Kingston Foreshore, 43 Eastlake Parade

Cost: I attended Movenpick Kingston as a guest; we paid for the ice cream sandwich macarons

Worthwhile factor: Highly worthwhile

Value for money: Reasonable: as you might expect from a product with ingredients sourced from around the world and centrally prepared in Switzerland, a single scoop is on the upper end for cost – but it is very high quality.

Want more? Check out their Facebook page for more.

Frugii Dessert Laboratory

This is not a paid post but this is a post with an inherent bias. It’s because I simply love Frugii. I’ve been a Frugii fanatic for a long while – enjoying a breakfast ice cream cone on Saturday mornings at the EPIC Farmers Markets or an afternoon ice cream cup at the Old Bus Depot Markets. There’s nothing that Mr Frugii aka John can do wrong. Tomato sorbet? You got it. Pavlova ice cream? Yep. Wheat beer ice cream? Easy done.

Gingerbread? Sour cream? Licorice? Musk? Christmas pudding? Gin and tonic? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and YES. (I’ve tried them all.) And John was doing all of these flavours well before he opened the Frugii Dessert Laboratory in the Ori building on Lonsdale Street earlier this year.

Brunch at Eightysix

After almost two years in business, people still rave about Eightysix and talk about it like it’s new – which is really saying something given how there’s something new (and good) opening up every week (or more) in Canberra, especially on Lonsdale Street near where Eightysix is housed. As part of October’s Good Food Month, Eightysix – usually only open for lunch and dinner (my first experience here) – launched a Sunday brunch menu which they’ve decided to keep up indefinitely.

In addition to the menu pasted on Facebook, fantastic local bloggers Megan and Natalie‘s reviews had me salivating. Thus, even with a relatively full tummy from dinner at Temporada last night (post forthcoming!), we were committed to having the experience today.