Apart from a rather ambitious list of Hanoi-specific dishes to sample, my itinerary for the capital includes three personal wishes: ride the Hanoi Metro, visit Sonder Coffee Bar, and try out Freezedom’s ice cream.
The latter two are both quirky indie hangout spots I’ve followed for ages on social media, yearning for their uniquely sounding creations and waiting for one day when a northward flight will take me to their doorstep. Though our tight eating schedule this time prevented me from catching a metro trip, I’ve managed to sample the tasty beverages and gelato flavors in the flesh.
As an ice cream enthusiast, I’ve had my fair share of frozen treats in Saigon over the span of my lifetime. Foreign chains have come and gone. Hobbyists set up online shops, dishing out home-churned pints. Some even became successful enough to cross over to brick-and-mortar locations. And a few went big enough to hit supermarket shelves. While I can name quite a handful of specific flavors and gelaterias in town I would gladly get brainfreeze for, few can come close to the sense of wide-eyed fascination that the folks behind Freezedom Hanoi imbued into their frozen brainchildren and put forward into our world.
There’s a significant financial risk to running an ice cream parlor, so I understand why most places feel the need to provide safe basics to appeal to the hoi polloi: chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, coffee, etc. I have an innate need for novelty, so my all-time favorite thing at a new ice cream place is that magical moment when I gaze inside the glass display for the first time and be overwhelmed by choices in the best way. It, however, can be disappointing to see that the most exotic thing inside that glass display is… passionfruit.
While Freezedom does offer a slew of classics like cookies & cream, salted caramel, or rum & raisin, what distinguishes them from the rest is their drive to constantly experiment to come up with exciting flavors, many of which seek to lionize Vietnam’s endemic flora and cultural dishes. They’ve crafted sorbets from mangosteen, cóc, Hanoian plum, lotus tea, sấu, persimmon, and jasmine beancurd, just to name a few.
The bulk of flavors on offer here is never the same, as it depends on the seasonality of the ingredients.
As is the nature of such experiments, the texture can vary between flavors — some are better aerated, some are more stable, and some can be a tad icy — but most of the time, the essence of the featured fruit or dish at hand is always well-encapsulated. From my visit, cóc sorbet was a hesitant pick that we didn’t expect much from, but ended up being an instant favorite for its tartness and freshness, both balanced well thanks to a packet of salted plum sea salt as accouterment.
If you follow Freezedom’s social media, you will learn that not all experiments yield edible results, and new flavors often have short runs due to the featured fruit only being in season for a fleeting time, but it is their transient existences that make the wait and urgency exciting. Mangosteen season might be short, but Freezedom’s creative spirit seems evergreen — just something we can always use more of in this constantly churning grind.
Freezedom Hanoi
29B Ngõ 100 Đội Cấn Street, Đội Cấn Ward, Ba Đình District, Hanoi
