Hong Kong’s obsession with ice cream is anything but chill

Just as Hong Kong temperatures drop, the dessert wars are heating up, thanks to an ongoing love affair with ice cream and gelato. What began in earnest in 2022, with the opening of cult Australian brand Messina, has continued apace this summer with the unveiling of Milan-inspired gelateria Snack Baby, and the momentum has only increased since then.

Within the past two months, the city has seen a wave of new openings, with notables being Italian-Japanese gelato-centric cafe Tozzo; Singaporean transplant The Ice Cream & Cookie Co; Liz & Tori, an ice-cream shop that chef Vicky Cheng of Michelin-starred restaurant VEA dedicated to his two daughters; and Okinawan import Yonna Yonna Gelato.

Yet this is no flash in the pan; Hong Kong’s penchant for ice cream can be traced back to more than a century ago, with the opening of On Lok Yuen, a Western-style cafe chain that established the city’s first ice-cream factory in 1921. Then came Dairy Farm, which entered the ice-cream business in 1928, and in the decades since, home-grown ice-cream brands such as Appolo, Yan Chim Kee, Mister Softee and XTC Gelato have become Hong Kong icons. But as internet culture has taken hold, consumers with increasingly sophisticated palates are dialling ever deeper into regional varieties that come with a sense of terroir.

The result is a panoply of frozen flavours that span the world. Take the maritozzo, a Roman pastry traditionally filled with cream but which, at Tozzo, becomes an ice-cream bao of sorts with the addition of a gelato filling. At Yonna Yonna, the sister brand of Okinawa’s Yanbaru Gelato, patrons indulge in flavours native to the southern Japanese archipelago, such as the indigenous Katsuyama shikuwasa lime and sweet red potato from Iejima.

“I was introduced to Yanbaru Gelato a few years ago, before Covid-19,” says Yonna Yonna’s director, Henrietta Tseng. “I just couldn’t forget the taste of it for all these years. My first bite was mini-tomato and yomogi – it twisted my perception of gelato.

“I travelled back after the borders opened as I wanted to reconfirm if that was what I had been seeking to bring back to Hong Kong.”

To Tseng, eating gelato offers respite from the day. “My brand name means ‘take your time’ in the Okinawan dialect. These days we call it ‘me time’. It’s important to reward ourselves here and there to generate positive energy, [and eating gelato is] probably one of the easiest ways to fulfil that.”