Ice cream with seafood chunks has become popular in Japan, where the Kagawa fishery cooperative has been scooping it up for customers for 10 years. Their ice cream is available in six flavors – yellowtail flounder, baby sardine, seaweed, octopus, crab and shrimp.
According to the Japan Times, the makers have developed a way to remove as much of the fishy smell as possible, while keeping the delicious flavors. The ice cream is sold at some airports, highway parking lots, and resorts. The co-op also sells its ice cream by mail.
Although some tend to think of it as a joke product, the sellers take their ice cream very seriously. The Kagawa makers said they developed the desserts because more children and young women are shifting away from a healthful fish diet, and seafood ice cream is one way to draw them back.
People in Taiwan also have gotten a taste for seafood ice cream. For about a dollar a scoop you can select from 13 flavors including strawberry tuna, wasabi cuttlefish and pineapple shrimp. The savory ice cream comes in stark colors like orange, green and black and is topped with sprinkles of dried fish, roe or chopped squid.
Coppa’s novel dessert was created by Liny Hsueh, who sells under the brand name ‘Doctor Ice.’ She is expanding to a second outlet and adding scallops as the newest flavor to her seafood ice cream line-up.
Since the baby food makers won’t do it, perhaps the ice cream industry will lead the charge to get more seafood into the mouths of American kids.
