Coconut Chili, Sexual Chocolate, Chicken & Waffles. Sugarbar in De Clercqstraat has milkshakes in flavors from your wildest dreams. Ideal as an aperitif for the Milkshake Festival that takes place this weekend in the Westerpark.
I can eat like the best, but I can’t cook. Recently, however, my friend Clara gave me an oil with which even I can make fish, chicken or tofu excel: Chilli Chan’s Crispy Chili Oil. I recognize the jar when I walk into Sugarbar at De Clercqstraat 48H. I grab a copy eagerly. Owner Nekeia Boone laughs and says that she has processed the oil in sorbet ice cream. “It’s delicious! You should try it.”
Funky smaken
No matter how curious I am, I hold back. Today I’m going for a milkshake. Nekeia can shake one of all the flavors of ice cream she offers this day. And those flavors are at least as funky as the music I hear: Prince and Sheila E met A Love Bizarre. “Chocolate and salted caramel we know now,” she explains. “My ice cream had to be different. I wanted to make ice cream in flavors you wouldn’t expect at all.” Her intention led to creations such as Hot Honey, Balsamic Blueberry, Chicken & Waffles and Sexual Chocolate: dark chocolate ice cream with crispy bacon strips and salted macadamia nuts. Fie, fie, fie. Bad brain. Kinky as hell. I say yes!
Liquid lunch
Just not now. Today it will be a Coconut Chili, a shake with ‘vibes of a Tulum sunset – a little bit of chill with a lot of heat’. “What milk do you want? I also have coconut milk.” Regular for me, please. The velvety soft mixture of scoops of ice cream, milk and lots of whipped cream slides in smoothly (10.50 euros). I don’t taste the chili right away, until it starts to tickle at the back of my throat. Slowly the pepper asserts itself and the kernel comes into its own: nice and hot. It’s all mega powerful, it could have been my lunch. A liquid lunch with a twist, as it were. Happy as a child I give Nekeia a thumbs up.
Business
It was not written in the stars that the American would turn out to be an ice cream maker. Nekeia, who grew up in New York (Harlem), worked for years as a UX copywriter and tech manager before she switched from business to culinary. When she spent a lot of time at home during the pandemic, like ‘the whole world’, she started creating. She has been fond of ice cream since childhood. She also has a weakness for cooking. From her oh Tudy she had learned how important it is to follow your gut when cooking. She told Nekeia how to make Afro-Caribbean dishes like bread pudding, collard greenssweet potato pie and fried chicken must make. Combining her love of ice cream and cooking, Nekeia brought ice cream after ice cream to the world during the pandemic. Her friends tipped her off. “They said: ‘Quit your job and start your own business.’ Pretty scary, of course. But I decided to do it.”
Tudy’s Kitchen
She rented a space at The Kitchen Republic and started making ice cream under the name Tudy’s Kitchen. Shops such as Stach and Sterk were the first to see bread in her creations and slowly her company took off. Time for the next step: your own shop. When the Vegabond property became vacant, she seized her chance. Her Sugarbar opened in early July. Shortly after she had a serious setback: a burglar had destroyed the glass entrance door, something that had caused her “extra work, costs and sleepless nights”. “Very annoying, I can’t deny that. But against that one unpleasant event there are at least five beautiful experiences. So many lovely people came by to say how sorry they felt for me. I now mainly look ahead.”
Cookies with ice cream in between
Indeed: the only way is up! Her store is one to be proud of.
Colorful details on the walls, shelves with Bohemian Cacao chocolates and other sweets, refrigerators with ice cream and desserts. Moreover, there is also plenty of seating space to relax and lick an ice cream, slurp down a milkshake or grab a coffee, possibly with a coconut cupcake of ‘sammy’ there: big homemade cakes with ice cream in between.
Lelani Lewis
The fact that Sugarbar is not just another ice cream or dessert bar is also evident from the team that Nekeia has gathered around her. For example, her food stylist is Lelani Lewis, author of the brilliant Code Black, a cookbook that takes her back to the roots of her Caribbean food culture. Nekeia also puts part of the proceeds from her ice cream brand into a fund to support entrepreneurs from disadvantaged groups – especially black women.
Sugarbar Bike
Curious about this American and her ice cream? Then keep an eye on Sugarbar’s Instagram page. She plans to throw a party in her store soon. And: if you go to the Milkshake Festival this weekend, take a good look around you. Chances are the Sugarbar Bike is nearby, so you can score an ice cream or milkshake!
2023-07-29 05:30:49
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