It’s just another bright and balmy beach day. Salty, clammy breezes caress your skin. Soft and grainy sand trickles through your toes. The air is plump with sunlit rays and the water sparkling with hues of blue. With full hearts and hands holding…  an ice cream!

These vivid expressions are often used to describe time spent at the seaside. After all, were you even at the beach if you did not get sand between your toes and treat yourself to something nice like an ice cream? The
sweet dessert is forever entrenched in our beach associations, but in the coastal town of Swakopmund, the honour goes to gelato, the Italian version of the creamy delicacy.

Gelato, as it turns out, is an art. It is not the same as its frozen peers. It has a denser texture because it does not have air whipped into it like with ice cream. This makes for a much more flavourful product and requires special skill to make it.

Interestingly, humans have been making frozen desserts for more than 5000 years. Gelato, in particular, has been around since the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century. It is said that a famous artist, architect and a native of Florence, Bernardo Buontalenti, gifted us with gelato when he served this unique version of frozen delight at a banquet for the king of Spain. But it was not until the late 17th century, when an Italian by the name of Francesco Procopio moved from Palermo to Paris and opened a gelato-serving cafe, that the dessert started to gain in popularity across Europe and, eventually, the world.

Today you’ll find authentic artisan and homemade gelato – made using both Italian and Namibian ingredients – at Ice & Spice in the heart of Swakopmund.

This success story began in 2014, when Ice & Spice opened its doors. In 2016 two Grootfontein residents moved to the coast and bought the little ice-cream shop. The husband-and-wife duo of Paul and Edith Ströh had always dreamt of becoming chefs but never had the opportunity – one working at a hardware store and the other in insurance. When life took an unexpected turn and the chance to make artisan gelato presented itself, they leapt at the opportunity.

Their art is closely guarded through secret ingredients and a mix of Italian imported components as well as Namibian produce. They attribute the success of their consistently delicious taste to the regular training they receive from Italian artisans who travel to Namibia to share their expertise with Paul and staff member Victor Naftali, who are the two gelato makers at Ice & Spice. That, and their machine, which they call the “Mercedes-Benz of ice-cream makers”.

Edith explains that everything is made fresh and that they pasteurise their own milk in small batches. This means they produce smaller amounts, with fresher ingredients and “lots of love and passion”.

No colourants or preservatives are added and, where possible, they source their ingredients from Namibia. This means their strawberries come from Okahandja, their mangoes from Tsumeb and their chocolate from Namib Belgian Chocolatier. Everything is made at their factory, mere steps away from their retail outlet.

It doesn’t need to be a hot sunny day for streams of people to come in for the mouth-watering and smile-inducing delicacy. “We are very grateful to our clients, both tourists and locals, who support us no matter the weather,” says Edith. She goes on to explain that during the recent pandemic, they were kept alive by the local market who would order their gelato to be delivered to their doors.