Wander into New Regent Street’s Rollickin Gelato HQ on the right day of the week and you may find yourself part of “the huddle meeting”, where the chefs at the city’s hippest gelato joint will be brainstorming new flavours and lobbying for old favourites for the fortnightly menu update.
“Because our customers are listening in around us, often they’ll jump in and make suggestions. And we’ll see if we can slot it in somewhere,” Jed Joyce, Rollickin’s founder, tells Flavours of Christchurch.
That’s just how Rollickin came to have The Cinema on its roster, with a salted vanilla base and layers of caramelised popcorn and chocolate. “That’s a classic example,” says Jed. “We were sitting there having our meeting and somebody sitting at a nearby table just jumped in and suggested it.”
For Jed and the rest of the Rollickin Gelato team, it’s about being responsive to their community. Oh, and going to great lengths to provide them with ice cream and sorbet that is “dense and puku-filling, rather than fluffed up with air”. Those lengths include making all the “inclusions” – like the hokey pokey, butter biscuits, gingerbread, berry jams, fudge and cake – in-house. It’s a real science creating flavours that are creamy and taste great, and where the cake or sauce inclusions don’t freeze into hard lumps. Over 5kg of real fruit go into a 14kg batch of sorbet.
Where they can’t make it themselves, they seek out suppliers that match their ideals, which is why Rollickin is switching to using chocolate from OCHO, the Otago craft chocolate company set up in Dunedin after the Cadbury factory closed.
With its massive street cred on social and a reputation for getting behind a good cause, Rollickin is a magnet for anyone wanting to get a message across. That’s how it came to make an Antarctic flavour and send some down to Scott Base, to draw attention to the important climate-change work being done down there by Kiwi and international scientists. Or its lolly-cake Pride flavour for Qtopia, or the Love Big flavour, Rollickin’s response to the city’s mosque tragedies. In both these cases, proceeds from sales went to the cause.
Rollickin’s chefs are always up for a challenge – like making gelato that glows for 2018’s Botanic D’Lights festival in the Botanic Gardens and Arts Centre. Jed made the rash promise to the festival organisers and then the chefs had to work out how to do it without chemicals or, you know, uranium or something. Did you know pineapple juice and tonic water glow naturally under UV light? Rollickin’s chefs do, now. They nailed the recipe with days to spare and festival goers got to get their glow on, naturally.
For many customers, though, it’s hard to go past the old favourites. Like Pop’s Lemon Pie. With lemon juice and zest in the gelato, crumbled house-made butter biscuits and layers of fresh lemon curd, it’s citrus to the max.
The flavour’s fans are happy to wait for their scoop. Like the day the shop was busy and those waiting could see one of the chefs at work. “Is he making Pop’s Lemon Pie,” one customer asked. Yes was the answer, but “it won’t be ready for another 20 minutes”. “No worries, we’ll wait.” And that’s how a growing gaggle of lemon lovers ended up spilling out into New Regent Street, a community within a community.
As well as gelato and sorbet, Rollickin has a wide range of cabinet food available, all made in-house, and everything can be had with a scoop of gelato.