Ice Cream in Iquitos

Location:
East side of Plaza de Armas
Iquitos, Peru

Restaurant Types:
Dessert / Ice Cream

By Kris Dreessen

Amazonian fruits make cool sweets in Iquitos as unique ice-cream flavors. Travelers can taste some at several businesses around the city's central park, Plaza de Armas. Giornatta is the most popular parlor and announces its stock simply, with a big helado sign above its entrance on Próspero 127, on the plaza's east side. Helado is ice cream in Spanish and here, there's more than 25 flavors to sample. Giornatta features ice cream made in the only ice-cream factory in Iquitos. Scoops cost less than $1 (about 3 nuevo soles). There's usually a line, especially when school lets out and on weekends. There's a dozen or so tables if you want to eat in.

Satisfy your sweet tooth with cones or dishes of aguaje, guanábana and camu camu—all fruits found locally. The camu camu ice cream is made from the reddish-purple, vitamin-C-packed berries of a low-growing shrub found in the jungle. The flavor is part citrus, part sour. Aguaje ice cream is made from the tangerine-sized fruit of female aguaje palm trees. The fruits fetch a high price at market and debate about the effect its harvesting has on the forest and animals is heating up. People don't pick the fruits; they collect them by cutting down the trees, which can reach 40 meters high. Lowland tapirs, grey brocket deer and other wildlife rely on the fruit for their diets. The guanábana fruit is dark green. Split it open and it has a creamy flesh with a horseshoe pattern of black seeds. The ice cream is more mild than the fruit, and is sweet and a tad sour. Maracujá, or passionfruit, is extra sweet in this parlor while managing to still taste natural and coconut is close to pure coconut juice. Because fruits are native and always fresh, the flavors are punchier and authentic.

Street vendors are usually at Plaza de Armas or on main streets selling homemade aguaje popsicles oncarts, though if they used water, there's no way to be sure it's safe to consume.

Ari's Burger (Próspero 127, at the corner of Próspero and Napo, 7 a.m. to 3 a.m.) serves traditional chocolate, vanilla and local flavors, as does the chicken joint on the same side of the street. Many restaurants such as Fitzcarraldo Restaurant and Bar (Napo 100) on the riverside promenade and Chez Maggy (Raimondi 181) offer ice cream on their dessert menu. Of course, there's less variety than dedicated ice-cream parlors. Another eatery, Shambo, three blocks off Plaza de Armas (Morona 394, at Huallaga) has a variety of homemade popsicles made from local and common fruits.