Exotic flavors find favor in ice cream

There is nothing vanilla about Jackie Bell's line of ice cream. Avocado, red beans and jackfruit flavors. How about durian, taro or mung bean ice cream on a stick?

People don't often mistake her ice cream for Baskin-Robbins, quipped Bell, owner of an ice-cream shop in Rainier Valley called Ca Rem No. 1, Vietnamese for "No.1 ice cream."

"I want to surprise people with flavors they are not used to tasting," Bell said in Vietnamese. "There is a world of ice cream out there beyond chocolate and vanilla."

For the past six years, Bell, a Vietnamese refugee, has gained a cult following for her exotic line of ice cream, drawing sweet tooths from as far as Spokane to her shop.

Strangely addictive, her nondairy ice cream gets its rich and creamy texture from coconut milk and tapioca starch and its distinctive flavor from durian and other exotic fruits.

The tropical taste is comparable to an Indonesian mung-bean-and-coconut-based dessert or a Vietnamese fruit-condensed milk drink.

You won't find any cookies 'n' cream in Bell's shop. But in the Asian community, few would do a double take over her concoctions. Durian, jackfruit and red beans often serve as the foundation for desserts in Vietnam, China and Thailand. And avocado is often used in dessert drinks in Vietnam.

Vietnamese ice cream has a big following in California, especially in Vietnamese- American communities such as those in Orange County and San Jose.

When Bell moved with her husband and two boys from San Francisco to Des Moines, in 1999, she noticed Seattle had only one Vietnamese ice-cream shop, Ca Rem No. 1 in Rainier Valley.

That spring, Bell bought the store. Though she had run small cafes in her homeland and in California, she had never whipped up ice cream. "But I knew I was on to something," she said.

Like traditional Vietnamese desserts, Ca Rem doesn't use butter or milk. Bell expanded her line of exotic ice cream to 10 flavors and figured she could develop a niche market for the lactose-intolerant crowd. Instead, she found a larger following among ice-cream lovers and foodies through word of mouth.

About 60 Asian delis and grocery stores as far away as Portland carry her ice cream, which are served on sticks like Popsicles. Most shops in the Chinatown International District, including Uwajimaya, sell Ca Rem for about 85 cents.

The durian and jackfruit flavors have become best-sellers even outside of the Asian community, a surprise considering many Americans complain that those southeastern fruits smell pungent, Bell said. The durian smells like Limburger cheese.

But ice-cream connoisseurs and gourmets love the complex and distinctive flavors. Ed Hamblin, a retired banker from Spokane, visits Bell's store every two months and buys enough ice cream to fill his 30-gallon cooler. "It is not like a lot of the American ice creams where they whip too much air into it for volume," said Hamblin, who prefers the durian flavor. "Her ice cream has more natural flavors. The taste comes through."

Bernard Garbusjuk of Boehms Candies is such a big fan that Ca Rem No. 1 recently became one of the few non-Boehms products ever to be sold in his Issaquah shop .

At Boehms, customers prefer their ice cream covered in chocolate and rolled in nuts. "What caught my eye is it's not a dairy product," he said. Yet "it's much richer and has more of a component of a (dairy) ice cream as opposed to a Popsicle."

Bell plans to introduce a line of ice-cream cakes as early as this summer.

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com