Anyone up for caramelized eggplant gelato?
Queen West’s Death in Venice boasts popular flavours that are both wondrous and weird Sometimes the best food happens when you least expect it — like, when flavour combinations that seem out of whack actually work.
Take caramelized eggplant and tahini gelato, for instance. “Why is it so hard to imagine?” tireless gelato lover and maker Kaya Ogruce, 35, said. “In the end it’s all about the taste.”
Well, the taste of Ogruce’s “baba ghanoush” gelato — or its “weirdness” factor — has been drawing throngs through Queen St. W.’s construction zone to Death in Venice Gelato Co.
The pop-up frozen counter just took over the lease of former Constantinople Bakery at 536 Queen St. W. There, foodies eat their way through about 50 to 75 scoops weekly of the unusual flavour ($3.90 for one scoop).
It’s been happening ever since Ogruce, a former chemical engineer, took over the back kitchen a few months ago, outfitting it with an imported gelato machine the size of a small car.
The strawberry, Thai basil and juniper flavour (it’s vegan too) is winning the most gustatory votes, Ogruce said, but, the odder the ingredients, the more popular the flavour. His “hay and honey” is a big seller. Customers can’t stay away from the cricket and mealworm combo.
And the smoked pear, white wine and mustard flavour has been getting the thumbs up, he said.
It seems people are “never satisfied with the weirdness,” Ogruce said, noting customers relish the challenge of more savoury flavours. He’s good with that. If they wanted plain old chocolate, “I’d send them to Ben & Jerry’s.”
Ogruce’s penchant for risk, let’s say, is not new. It’s what drew this Turkish expat to the grub biz.
He was enjoying a sweet gig with Unilever Canada not too long ago. As the only refinery engineer at its plant outside Toronto, he said he oversaw the production of Becel margarine; making it happen, solving problems.
But he wasn’t fulfilled, he said. So, he took a year’s leave, telling his boss he was off to do a master’s program when really, he enrolled at Stratford Chefs School. “I never looked back. I didn’t even have a chance to think about it.”
From there, he says he apprenticed at Scaramouche, interned at three-Michelin-starred restaurants abroad and won an episode of Chopped Canada in April.
In June 2015, he found himself at the end of a motorcycle ride and on top of a Sicilian mountain, he said, with his girlfriend Maddalena Fuller, 34, licking gelatos. That was the “aha moment.” He turned to Fuller and said: “Why don’t we make gelato for a living?”
Death In Venice, which they coown, was born. They named it after the famous adagio in Gustav Mahler’s 5th symphony. (Ogruce said he decided 12 years ago to give a company, any company, even a plumbing company that name one day.)
At the time, he said, he didn’t realize there was a difference between ice cream and gelato. But, now, the “i” word is verboten. “We don’t use the “i” word around here,” he said. “It’s like going to a Chinese restaurant and asking for Japanese food.”
Gelato is milk-based and without eggs to absorb and overpower the flavours, he said.
And yet, gelato is creamier, more intense. The eggplant and tahini fla- vours shine through a scoop of Ogruce’s frozen treat like shimmering lanterns illuminating a Middle Eastern bazaar after dusk.
They taste like what they are — and bear the unmistakable tang of a Mediterranean appetizer — but take a magical dessert turn. Definitely worth a lick.
Next up, hummus and fava bean gelato, please? Need something Sourced? Email mhenry@thestar.ca