Dig in to an imagined American classic

In a city where many ice cream traditions thrive, jive and survive, Jacob O Gold investigates one of the more delicious and inventive transplants Ha Noi has to offer.

These days on our troubled blue planet, it is among the finer consolations of life that everywhere there is ice cream, and that everywhere the sweet substance, in all its forms, serves as a mainline into the everyday poetry by which a given people on the earth have come to enjoy their shared experience. Taste a place’s ice cream, and you will catch a glint of true understanding.

The ice cream bars dished out daily in their hundreds from Kem Trang Tien – bright, gently sweet, subtle almost to the point of austerity yet somehow unforgettable – might broadcast what could be called the common anthem of the Ha Noi character. But Ha Noi, a city of diverse styles and influences, prudently hospitable to its cultural guests, allows its citizens plenty of songs to call their own. Reflected among these are the city’s wide varieties of delicious ice cream, inspired by the traditions of elsewhere but adapted in uniquely Vietnamese styles that, fortunately, can be enjoyed by anyone.

Kem My, at 39E Ly Thuong Kiet, is perhaps the most striking, and uniquely tasty, of these nativised transplants. The better mousetrap at the heart of the place was shipped to Ha Noi some four years ago by a Vietnamese entrepreneur. Passing through the United States, it seems, to quote the old Scots-Irish folk tune still sung in the hollows of Appalachia, "our captain fell in love, with a lady like a dove." Except her name wasn’t Pretty Peggy-O. It was "Flavor Burst".

Out there on the Midwestern prairie, in high school cafeterias and amusement park concession stands, humming away on Little League afternoons and idle teenage evenings, there lives as it rattles a Soft Machine largely unknown outside the nation’s homey interior margins. This is the Flavor Burst ice cream system. A gorgeous living fossil eclipsed by less innocent times, Ha Noi residents ought to be grateful that the device has been redeemed and reinvented to take its place in their city’s mellow golden sun.

This is how the Flavor Burst machine works: At the pull of a lever, a vaguely sweet but undefined rope of soft-serve ice cream tumbles twisting from a steel vat into a clear plastic dish. The Flavor Burst technician then dials a number into the side of the machine corresponding to the patron’s desired flavor. A flexible tube fills with concentrated flavor-dye. The technician proceeds to dress the ridges, curves, and spirals of frosty ice cream with this colorful goo.

The result is an edible abstract canvas crackling with neon electricity, a distilled moment of post-war dreamland in which Jackson Pollock meets American Graffiti at the psychedelic horizon.

And yet this product, and therefore this moment, is largely inaccessible in the country that forms the basis of its inspiration. One wonders if these sensations – born out of nostalgia for a time when folks still dared to imagine the future as something more – are of any consequence to Kem My’s local customers, afforded by their national history with more excitement for tomorrow than dread.

One can contemplate the matter to the heart’s content at Kem My, where a menu of almost 20 deliciously synthetic flavours (including pumpkin!), available in endless day-glo combinations, will enthrall any customer for as long as it takes to bear the matter out.

Kem My
Address: 39E Ly Thuong Kiet
Phone: (04) 9362231
Hours: 6am-11pm daily
Comment: An obscure American taste sensation transformed into a uniquely Vietnamese delight.

Source VietnamNews