If you eat a good-looking soft serve ice-cream with devilish toppings and don’t put it on Instagram, have you eaten it at all? Increasingly elaborate ice-cream concoctions are having their moment in the sun and we dare you not to reach for your phone to take a picture at recently opened Sweet Salvation in Dubai.
On the menu are large soft serve cones, enrobed in extravagantly sprinkled toppings, with names like Cookies, Cookies, Cookies & Cream (wonder what’s in these?) or the Dubai exclusive; Gold Digger – saffron vanilla soft serve, toasted pistachio and cardamom caramel, these are ice cream marathons.
The original concept was born in Canada by Monarchs & Misfits, when the desserts trialled at La Carnita – their taqueria which in itself had morphed from a well-loved pop-up – proved extremely popular, and went on to become the soft serve sensation; Sweet Jesus, now firmly established as stand-alone successes in Toronto and Ottawa.
With this heritage, it was natural that Navigate Design, the Toronto based architect and design firm, were put in charge of the first store outside Canada. They have consciously made the corner store in City Walk 2, easy on the camera’s eye. The brand’s signature blue accents the Insta-friendly door as well as the shipping container repurposed as the serving station. Grey veined white marble counters and muted coloured rhombus floor tiles all create backdrops for perfect imagery. If ice cream carnivals in a cone aren’t quite your thing, they also do cold brew coffee.
