Located in a tight space on 147 Brighton Ave., Hi B3ar is the first restaurant in Boston to serve the latest and hottest Instagram dessert trend: the ice cream roll.
Rolled ice cream debuted in Thailand around 2011 and quickly gained popularity as a fun dessert street food. The beautiful aesthetic and intriguing process quickly spread the dessert to spots in Los Angeles and New York City.
The concept of the sweet snack is simple: cold, flavored cream is spread out on a chilled metal plate, frozen on the spot with mixed-in toppings such as Oreos and fudge sauce and then scraped off and shaped into spiraled ice cream rolls. Finally, after a year of the trend being featured on websites like Buzzfeed, ice cream rolls have made their debut in Boston.
Hi B3ar opened in Allston last month. The owner, Tiffany Huang, also owns a nearby Sichuan establishment called Mala Restaurant and a spot in Brookline called Sushi Express. Her goal, according to the Hi B3ar website, “is to give everyone a Hot spicy taste for your mouth then a Cold sweet taste for dessert.”
Upon visiting Hi B3ar on Sunday afternoon, there was a line around the block. While waiting, customers can peruse over the available flavors such as Key Lime Pie, Cookie Monster, Mango Tango and Pina Colada. Finally, after about 20 minutes of waiting, the order is placed. After that, there is another wait for the workers to call out the customer’s name, which indicates that they have started making their specific order. This all would not be so bad, had the space been larger. Instead, everybody is packed standing around the counter with only one bench available for seating.
“Normally, we aren’t so crowded during the weekdays,” Huang said. “But on weekends, there is a line around the door. I’d say it’s been pretty successful so far.”
Watching the creation of the ice cream is the best part. The $7 price tag indicates that the customer is also paying for the experience. There is a $10 limit on cards, so if someone just wants to buy one ice cream roll, they must pay in cash. Everybody has their phones out, taking photos for Instagram and videos for Snapchat stories. After the ice cream is created, a two- to four-minute process, customers have the option of choosing unlimited toppings, similar to the process in a frozen yogurt store. Some notable toppings include a toasted marshmallow, fresh fruits and Japanese cookie sticks called Pocky.
Emma Quirk, a sophomore in the the College of Arts and Sciences, said she thought the whole experience was unlike anything else offered in Allston, but it did come with a steep price tag.
“The ice cream was good and it was a unique experience,” Quirk said. “However, the wait was too long for the quality, especially considering the price. I would go if you’re looking for a specialty ice cream and do not mind waiting awhile for the staff to make it.”
Bostonians may not be not used to the style of Thai ice cream rolls. Billy Kindle, a shift leader of the Coolidge Corner location of J.P. Licks, a popular Boston ice cream company, contrasted the new trend with J.P. Licks’ style of ice cream.
“I think it’s cute,” Kindle said in a phone interview with The Daily Free Press. “I mean, it’s a really creative way to sell the ice cream. It’s something people haven’t seen before.”
Back at Hi B3ar, after the whole creation process, the final product did indeed look beautiful and was a style of dessert completely unseen before. The ice cream itself tasted alright, similar to anything that would just come out of the pint.
The rolled shape offers the convenience of bite size portions, and the variety of toppings allow the customer to customize their ice cream to each palette. However, it is the aesthetic of the final product that made the experience stick out. Yet, this different aesthetic might be too much for other stores to pick up on.
“I don’t think [J.P. Licks] would ever do the rolled ice cream,” Kindle said, “because we really do stick to our basics because we are an old company and have been doing the same thing for 30 years.”
Kindle added that although J.P. Licks won’t adopt the trend, he thinks it’s a fun idea.
“We definitely back it up and think it is a cool way to sell the product,” he said.
