Blast from the past: The joy of eating a 99 ice cream
Just as we once only had three TV channels, we once only had limited ice cream flavours – vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, raspberry ripple and mint choc chip.
Before fancy flavours, ice cream was a simple affair. No wacky blue cheese and grape or caviar and walnut flavours jostled for space alongside the Findus Crispy Pancakes in supermarket freezers.
Vanilla was the original and the best. A treat on Sundays, it was served after dinner with tinned fruit cocktail, (which tasted absolutely nothing like fruit) and came in a molar-damaging ‘light syrup’. It was lovely though.
But 99s unquestionably lick the competition, and with summer sort of here, chances are you’ve had one curled out from an ice-cream van's spigot.
With a flake, a dollop of raspberry sauce, even some sprinkles, a 99 is pure, cold comfort. I can even recall when a 99 cost 99p, but one theory for the name is linked to a man called Stefano Arcari, who opened up an ice cream shop in Scotland at 99 Portobello High Street. He would apparently break a Flake in half and then place it in the ice cream to serve to his customers.
The real reason for the name may be lost in the swirls of time, but free of chunks of cookie dough and other daft distractions, a 99 remains our number one.