For those who like to stay off the beaten gastronomic track, there is rabri ice cream. A heavy symphony of two dairy-based, yet vastly different desserts, this is serious stuff for true gluttons.

It’s the favourite food of people around the world. Like music, it has no boundaries of language, age or culture and would do an as good or even better job of soothing the wild beast.

A BBC Food poll rated it in the top ten in gastronomic choices and the surliest curmudgeon cannot deny its obvious pleasures. If you are still wondering, I am waxing on about the great wrecker of diets and the bane of weight watchers: ice cream.

According to Greek legen, Prometheus the Titan was punished by Zeus for centuries by having a gigantic eagle gnaw at his liver everyday. His crime was giving mankind the secret of fire and ice cream, both exclusive possessions of the gods. If that’s tough, consider King Tantalus who was banished to Tartarus, the Greek Hell, for daring to steal ice cream and nectar, the food of gods.

OK. Maybe I exercised a little poetic license with the two legends but ambrosia could just as be a euphemism for ice cream, and surely our early ancestors could have wanted some ice cream after their endeavours of making fire. Legends aside, ever since some culinary genius on orders of Emperor Nero mixed a mixture of snow (which he sent his slaves into the mountains to retrieve), nectar, fruit pulp and honey, and churned it all up to create iced cream, we humans have been a slave to its irresistible charms. Nero was guilty of matricide and numerous heinous crimes but you can’t find fault with his culinary tastes.

As for us, when the city sizzles for 10 months of the year, the one thought of banishing the summer demons is of a sweet, creamy concoction designed purely for satiation of your sweet tooth. But for true ice cream connoisseurs weather is no benchmark to indulge themselves, for truly who can deny the Siren song of icy delights even in frigid temperatures. Thankfully we are not short of options and if one ventures away from the insipid branded stuff that has been disregarded in this article, a cornucopia of treats is at hand.

Karachi boasts a proud history of iced desserts. An uncle of mine is the local version of the stereotyped Jewish ‘maven’, i.e. a person who is an expert on all and sundry. Someone who’s breadth of knowledge ranges from the best place to get a suit stitched to a qeema parhata place open at the latest witching hour. According to him the standard fare has been in the city since colonial times but the first frozen sensation, the ice cream cone appeared in the now extinct Clifton Playground, way back in 1968.

It was 64 years after its creation at the 1904 St Louis World Fair but at long last it was here. Needless to say, it was a sensation and no trip to the Clifton beach or even the Hazrat Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s mausoleum would be complete without having the ice cream cone from Playland.

One establishment that has withstood the test of time, competition and trends is Baloch Ice cream. Setup in main Saddar area in the ’70s Baloch soon became the byword for ice cream shakes and faludas. The special faluda with rose and tutti-frutti ice cream is one of the finest ways to finish off a meal. Now in numerous locations, the most popular outlet is the Boat Basin one at which I have whiled away many hours sipping sumptuous cold coffees and sublime faludas. Getting service there on a Saturday night is a job but luckily it stays open till three in the morning so you can indulge yourself in peace.

Baloch happens to be one of the numerous native variety ice cream joints that are clubbed together with the appellation of Peshawari ice cream. These establishments are dotted all over the city, in fact many cities. A steel and glass freezer, tubs of various hues and flavours and a few worse for weather chairs are a familiar sight. The ice cream feels rustic and less processed then the branded variety. Heavy on the cream and light on the ice, Peshawari ice creams have their zenith in Raju Ice cream and Baloch.

You can have Baloch, Raju, Havmore, Ice Berg, Ice Village, Hyder and anything else but the final word lies with Raju Ice cream in Bahadurabad not to be confused by the establishment at Boat Basin. Raju has many flavours but it’s the simply dairy variety, that it is the cosmic ideal of Peshawari ice cream. The faluda is how God intended it to be, the sort you can expect to be served by dark-eyed hoors provided you make it there. Full on nuts, fruits, vermicelli, sweet milk and the sublime Peshawari the faluda is in short: simply divine.

For those who like to stray off the beaten gastronomic track, there is rabri ice cream. A heavy symphony of two dairy based, yet vastly different desserts, this is serious stuff for true gluttons. On a whim I even tried the rabri faluda made by simply adding a quantity of rabri along with the regular things and throwing in a bit of crushed ice. I found it to be an excellent though ponderous affair.

One cannot discuss ice cream without mentioning the desi frozen dessert, the kulfi. Although this article deals with ice cream and I am sure the purists would get out their lynching ropes, there’s no getting away from the fact that kulfi is the rustic cousin of the city-dwelling ice cream. The flavours are there too: pistachio, zafrani, mango, caramel crunch, chocolate chips, and almonds. For all that, nothing is as good as the simple fare make from the real moo’s stuff and cardamoms.

The ice cream world consists of two types of places. There are home-grown businesses with delicious offerings, simple presentation and little or no décor where your own vehicle is often the best seating option. Then there are new fangled theme places which offer pricy sweets done up so beautifully that your heart almost regrets at spoiling the dish with your spoon. Often the taste and the price are such that you often do regret bitterly. The ice cream is admittedly better than most local outlets but I find it difficult to enjoy when I leave with that hollow feeling inside that you get when you know you’ve been fleeced.

In short, ice cream offers a taste for every tooth from the humble street kulfi to Swiss imported delicacies. Be it an unaccompanied pleasure or a treat when with friends, ice cream will remain that rarest of thing: a sheer, unadulterated bliss.