French Riviera: The Famous Double Bay Ice Cream

I love it when friends visit!! Was absolutely giddy with excitement when Zee told me a couple of months ago that she was coming to Sydney with her now-fiance YS (CONGRATULATIONS AGAIN!). Wait, I CAN announce on my blog right? Everyone knows already right?

It was so much fun when those two were here! They did suffer a bit of Sydney’s erratic weather, but I’m always there hollering around bringing buckets of sunshine to them. Wahahaha.

I was really excited to bring them to French Riviera, which has just about the best yoghurt ice-cream that I know of. After a so-so dinner at Renato Trattoria at World Square (it could have something to do with the Four Cheeses Pizza that YS experimented with…), we headed a couple of blocks down to a very busy French Riviera. It was Halloween night and half of Sydney seemed to be roaming up and down George Street.

We managed to get squashed into a small table right infront of the cashier, but they seemed to be having a really busy night so we make do with what we’ve got. Before we even stepped into the cafe, Thad had already decided that we WILL be ordering the Tower.

So here’s the breakdown:

Rainbow Surprise – $32 (2-3 persons/17 scoops?)
Super Gastronomic Surprise – $37 (4-5 persons/24 scoops)
Maxi – $45 (6+ persons/?!?! scoops)

Not surprisingly, he was already eyeing the Maxi (even though there was only 4 of us!). He relented to a Super (but Zee and YS’s eyeballs were still popping out of their sockets) and I managed to convince him that after a huge dinner, all we can possibly stuff ourselves with was the Rainbow. We were concerned that the cafe would not allow, because they have a policy that each customer has to order a portion (i.e. no sharing of a single scoop between 2 people). So according to the menu, we would HAVE to order the Super. We got the attention of our beautiful waitress, and with a quavering voice and doeful eyes asked if we could get the Rainbow. And she said ‘Yes’ ! In fact, she commented that it was probably “more than enough”. Uh-oh…

So we chatted while waiting for the pile up to occur at the counter. At this point, I saw a staff pouring some yummy chocolate sauce over a tower and I went “Woah look at that! Man, thank goodness we didn’t order THAT! We wouldn’t be able to finish! Nah, that’ CAN’T be ours. No way! That’s the Maxi! It’s waayy too big! Must be for another table!” On and on I went, until she plonked the damn thing on our table. Gahhhh!

Think it doesn’t look too bad? Let’s compare with the size of my head.

Grinning from ear to ear

We were all pretty delirious staring at the Rainbow Surprise. Lots of photo-taking for evidence that we actually ordered the monstrosity.

The Rules:
1. Rotate every few minutes so everyone gets a shot at each flavour.
2. Head to counter and conduct visual check when mysterious flavour arises.
3. Exclaim when flavour resonates with tastebuds.
4. Enjoy good conversation with delicious ice-cream.

Okay, #2 and #3 were more for me.

Now, there’s no question that the ice-cream at French Riviera is goooood. But I think we were more overwhelmed by the Rainbow experience, rather than the taste of the ice-cream.

Still pretty tall...

My favourites are yoghurt and chocolate. His faves are the sorbets – lemon and passionfruit. When we take home a tub, those are the pretty much the only flavours we get. And so the Rainbow was great because suddenly we are trying all these flavours that we’ve ignored and forgotten! Also, the generous chocolate and peanut sauce that was poured over the Rainbow was just tantalizingly delicious. So rich and creamy and smooooth.

Making good progress!

I think we were hitting sugar-high by this point because everything became a lot funnier. I want to point out at this point that the tower itself was not the challenging bit. If you look a bit closer, it is the BASE where they have really piled on the scoops!

Almost done!

I’m proud to report that we blasted through the whole thing! It wasn’t too difficult actually. At some point I think our tastebuds went numb from the cold and multitude of flavours, so were just going at it with the focused goal of being able to say we finished the whole thing. And we did!

Voila!! Mission accomplished!

We were all clutching our tummies at this point in time and praying that we don’t suffer from stomachaches when we get home.

One for the album

And so we parted on a combination of sugar-high and endorphin-enducing laughter.

French Riviera Ice Cream
Address: Shop 5 – 68 Liverpool Street (Near Chinese Garden bridge)
Tel: 9264 2932
Open 7 days a week from 10am till 2am (Great for after-dinners!)
Website: http://www.frenchriviera.com.au/

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