Sorbetto started as a lockdown project for Ivan Varian. The Dalkey Food Company founder made premium, vegan-friendly sorbets in the midst of a heatwave before delivering them to friends' doorsteps, and now he's taking them to Taste of Dublin.
The range -- which comes in lemon; strawberry and basil; raspberry and tarragon; and chocolate orange flavours -- was an experiment for the Ballymaloe-trained chef that has outgrown its "very small scale origins".
Varian was inspired by the surroundings in Dalkey, which he says are "synonymous with the Amalfi Coast" with roads named Vico, Sorrento, etc, and put an extensive amount of time and effort into experimenting with flavours.
"I've been fascinated with mouthfeel, I talk a lot on the science of how we perceive flavour and how we taste," he says of the chocolate orange Sorbetto. "And with chocolate, it's always one where you get that gumminess on your mouth.
"Through looking at the science of that it's actually from the lactose rounds that are there, in the dairy that's present in the chocolate. I worked with some great suppliers up in La Rousse who got me some fantastic cacao powder that really works well with the orange.
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"The benefit of that is because there's no lactose, when you finish the sorbet in your mouth, you get this really clean, clear chocolate flavour, and not the gumminess that you normally associate when you eat chocolate."
Varian will be exhibiting the soft serve version of Sorbetto's lemon and chocolate orange flavours on the Artisan Producers' Row at Taste next week, and he's keen to change perceptions around sorbet as flavoured ice.
"What I do is that I whip my ice cream with my sorbet as it freezes up really, really high [revolutions per minute], so the ice crystals are much, much smaller ... and it cools much quicker and therefore you still get that creamy, creamy soft serve texture, but you don't have to have the dairy ... and it's not a granular sort of taste."
Varian founded the Dalkey Food Company in 2010, and the company handles private cheffing and catering in addition to making produce for cafés and coffee shops, but it has shifted into making vegan food, too, as he believes "everyone should have an alternative" available to them.
"I'm not vegan myself, but I always tried to replace a meat dish with a vegan alternative. In the light of day that vegan alternative is always perceived as a compromise on flavour, texture, taste and whatever. Whereas I want to make a vegan alternative that was as good ,if not better, than the meat or dairy version."
Varian is now looking to the future, having placed Sorbetto in a number of high-end boutique retailers, including Butler's Pantry and Donnybrook Fair, in south Dublin and Wicklow, and has approached a couple of reputable chains as he plots expansion.
If successful, he expects to increase his facilities 14-fold, taking on another 10-15 people, completing €400,000 worth of factory works, and Taste of Dublin could also be a catalyst for national expansion and help him secure delivery vans to make deliveries to Munster and Connacht.
Ultimately though, Varian is keen to keep operations largely in-house and retain "the principle core values" of the company, arguing that the quality of large international players such as Ben & Jerry's and Häagen-Dasz has declined as they have tried to increase their market.
"Keeping it under my wings, so to speak, is to protect the quality off the top because as the chef's motto goes, you're only as good as your last dish, and that goes for how I produce on a wider scale too."
The Dalkey Food Company will be at Taste 2022 June 16 - 19, located at the Artisan Producers Row in front of the band stage. Tickets for the Iveagh Garden event can be found HERE.
Photo: Ivan Varian.
