Category: Reviews | Post by: Andrea Wong
Daintree Ice Cream Company
Cape Tribulation Road (on the left hand side when heading north)
Cape Tribulation 4873
Queensland
Australia
Open daily: 11:00am - 5.00pm
We had to escape, we absolutely had to. Our poor house was without curtains, the gib was off the walls and there were no pink batts. The house was freezing! The kitchen was ripped out weeks ago and we were (and still are) cooking in the laundry with just a microwave, slow cooker, rice cooker and toasted sandwich maker.
Coping with all of this just as the temperature is plummeting outside made Mr H and I dream of sun and relaxation. A snap decision was made and we escaped to Port Douglas in Tropical North Queensland!
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As you may well know, ice cream is never far from my mind, so it is no surprise that my first post about Port Douglas is focusing on ice cream!
On the road up to Cape Tribulation, is a nice place to stop and stretch your legs and sample some ice cream. After crossing over the Daintree River in a cable ferry, you'll come across Daintree Ice Cream Company about 10 minutes up the road.
As we drove along the orchard-lined driveway to the main building, I saw fruit trees with their names at their bases. I spied a durian tree, its fruit infamously smell like teenaged-boys' socks but the fruit apparently tastes good. There were no durian on the trees when we visited (which is probably a good thing).
Driving through the small orchard signaled to us that this is not your typical ice cream shop. Don't expect to find your usual cookies and cream served here. You don't get a choice. Instead, you are offered a tasting cup of four small scoops of ice cream ($5), each a different flavour and made on-site from the fruit grown in the orchard.
I saw on Tripadvisor, that some people didn't like the lack of choice and the portion sizes. Be advised, this is not a place where the usual ice cream will be found - these can be bought in town. And I think, that $5 for this tasting cup is on par with Port Douglas gelato prices ($6 for a double scoop cup).
The flavours on offer for us were familiar (mango and passionfruit) and two that we hadn't had before (wattleseed and soursop). Susie (originally from Waiuku) who served us, explained that wattleseed has a cappuccino flavour and soursop is creamy citrus in taste.
Armed with a tasting cup each, Mr H and I settled ourselves at a table and dug in. The mango and passionfruit flavours were familiar but nice. But it was the wattle seed and soursop flavours that we really enjoyed. I was really surprised to find that wattleseed does in fact taste like a creamy coffee and the soursop was delicate and equally d'lish.
I would love to know if we can get this same kind of wattleseed here in New Zealand as I'd love to experiment with it.
Just off to one side of the table area was the ripening cage, where you could see several different kinds of picked fruit that was slowly ripening in the sun. There were a lot of sapotas, I wonder what these taste like? And if you felt like a wander around, there are maps of the orchard so that you can have a look at the trees at your leisure.
I liked the Daintree Ice Cream Company. It was a nice stop on the way up to Cape Tribulation, but for me more importantly, it showcased some of the produce from the region. I found myself yearning for regional food during the trip: local seafood, fruit and veges. It wasn't as widespread as I thought it would be, so visiting here was a treat for my tastebuds.
But then again, anything that combines tropical fruit with ice cream is going to be a winner with me!