From Mr Whippy to Michelin stars: the transformation of soft serve
It’s a nostalgic classic synonymous with beach days and ice cream vans – but chefs are taking the soft serve we know and love and giving it a modern makeover, as we discover.
From Mr Whippy to Michelin stars: the transformation of soft serve
It’s a nostalgic classic synonymous with beach days and ice cream vans – but chefs are taking the soft serve we know and love and giving it a modern makeover, as we discover.
Our love of soft serve ice cream can probably in part be put down it being fairly tricky to get hold of – we can’t make it at home without a pricey machine, it’s generally not sold in supermarkets and it’s traditionally been rarely used in restaurant desserts. Memories of it often centre around dashing out to join the ice cream van queue, or pausing for a 99 Flake during a day out by the sea. That was the case for some time – until recently, our best chance of getting our hands on a soft serve cone had been at fairs, carnivals and beachside counters – but that’s fast changing. Soft serve is now officially trendy, meaning it’s not only popping up in cafés and restaurants, but even on the most refined of tasting menus at Michelin-starred restaurants.
Soft serve is, as the name suggests, a less dense form of ice cream that’s made with less fat and more air and at a slightly warmer temperature than other types (often around -4°C compared to -15°C). Though it’s popular in the UK, it’s much more so in America, where it’s thought to have first been invented in the 1920s, and Japan, where it’s called soft cream and first arrived in the 1950s via American servicemen. No-one can agree on how exactly soft serve came to be – it’s said that in 1926 a New York ice cream maker patented what was the first soft serve machine, and that in 1934 another maker began selling slightly melted ice cream to passers-by after breaking down. He sold out and realised the demand for a softer choice. America’s Dairy Queen also claims to have invented it in 1938, while, in one of the odder myths, former prime minister Margaret Thatcher apparently helped devise a method for whipping extra air into ice cream when she briefly worked at J Lyons & Company.
Either way, soft serve took America by storm and soon spread to the UK, thanks to British businessman Dominic Facchino, who founded Mr Whippy in Birmingham in 1958. And though it has stayed popular ever since, the need for a special machine to make soft serve means it hasn't made the leap into home or professional kitchens in the same way that traditional ice cream has. That's until recently, when more cafés and restaurants started investing in their own machines – today, soft serve has had a makeover, with vibrant flavours and combinations that have taken it well beyond the classic Mr Whippy. Londoners in particular now have an ever-changing line-up of choices on the doorstep, from guava soft serve at Lower Clapton café Bake Street, olive oil and sea salt at Peckham's Forza Wine, coffee at Rosslyn Coffee, and chai at Chai Guys Bakehouse on Portobello Road. Then there's pop-up Soft and Swirly, responsible for creations including buckwheat; watermelon and raspberry; and hōjicha, and, as the name suggests, Shoreditch's Soft Serve Society is a go-to for cones, pots and freakshakes, with their three base flavours of vanilla, charcoal coconut and matcha. In short, soft serve is having a moment.
That's not escaped the attention of fine dining chefs, who, always keen to experiment and as susceptible to a hit of nostalgia as the rest of us, have also been weaving soft serve into their menus. At Jack Croft and Will Murray's Fallow, it's a menu regular, including a recent custard version with British rhubarb and ginger crumble (their recipe for brown bread soft serve is also above). Ollie Dabbous creates stunning soft serve creations at his Michelin-starred restaurant Hide in Piccadilly, Tommy Banks makes soft serve with toasted hay at his North Yorkshire country pub The Abbey Inn (including Eton Mess, affogato and chocolate sundae – pictured at the top – versions), Nottingham's Alchemilla chef Alex Bond opened a soft serve and fried chicken concept, Mollis, in 2022. Over at The Dorchester, meanwhile, Tom Booton has added a peach and cream dessert as soft serve of the summer.
Up in Scotland, Stuart Ralston's Tipo, a relaxed, Italian-inspired restaurant focusing on pasta and small plates, is also home to a soft serve machine. There, Stuart offers a two-flavour, swirled soft serve, with the flavours changing seasonally – for summer, it's vanilla and strawberry (using strawberry sorbet and fresh strawberries). 'I love soft serve generally,' Stuart says. 'It’s a very different texture to using a churner or Pacojet. It’s hugely cemented in nostalgia – everyone loves a Mr Whippy style ice cream – and fits perfectly into the space where gelato would ordinarily be in an Italian-style restaurant offering.' We could go on, but we think you get the idea. While we aren't ones to argue with a classic – a 99 Flake by the sea will always have a special place in our hearts – soft serve has so much more to offer, and thankfully modern chefs are busy tapping into its deliciously sweet potential.
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