AFP, Venezuela :
The Coromoto icecream parlour had it all – chocolate and vanilla for sure, though also garlic, avocado and even octopus sorbets… but the things you can’t find in Venezuela any more, like milk and sugar, means the landmark has had to close for good.
When Manuel Da Silva first opened its welcoming yellow doors in 1981, the Heladeria Coromoto offered its clients the tried and trusted – vanilla, strawberry, chocolate and coconut flavours.
Until one day, Manuel tried out an avocado sorbet on his customers. “It was a success!” says Jose Ramirez, Manuel’s son-in-law who now runs the business.
“He had a crazy idea and he started to invent, to try things with meat, with fish,” says Jose.
He might have stopped at chipi-chipi, a small Caribbean mollusc, but Manuel was clearly not a man to hold back on a hunch.
New flavours followed when he experimented with garlic as well as onion flavoured icecream.
Soon Manuel’s imagination knew no limits and the number of wacky flavours, and his reputation, grew.
“People were coming to try some strange things,” said Luis Marquez, a young local in the mountain town of Merida who grew up coming to the Coromoto.
The Coromoto icecream parlour had it all – chocolate and vanilla for sure, though also garlic, avocado and even octopus sorbets… but the things you can’t find in Venezuela any more, like milk and sugar, means the landmark has had to close for good.
When Manuel Da Silva first opened its welcoming yellow doors in 1981, the Heladeria Coromoto offered its clients the tried and trusted – vanilla, strawberry, chocolate and coconut flavours.
Until one day, Manuel tried out an avocado sorbet on his customers. “It was a success!” says Jose Ramirez, Manuel’s son-in-law who now runs the business.
“He had a crazy idea and he started to invent, to try things with meat, with fish,” says Jose.
He might have stopped at chipi-chipi, a small Caribbean mollusc, but Manuel was clearly not a man to hold back on a hunch.
New flavours followed when he experimented with garlic as well as onion flavoured icecream.
Soon Manuel’s imagination knew no limits and the number of wacky flavours, and his reputation, grew.
“People were coming to try some strange things,” said Luis Marquez, a young local in the mountain town of Merida who grew up coming to the Coromoto.
