I notice how not many nowadays talk about the big name international ice cream players that once took this little hot island of ours by storm. The chunky banana and brittle nut ice creams are now so passé in our makan vocabulary. Thanks or no thanks to the slew of very funky and honestly home spun ice cream mavens that kicked out butts with their teh tarek, horlicks, black sesame and stuff like red date longan sorbets. This guy was among the later ones to hop onto the hot business of ice creams.

David the ex-teacher, was inspired by the blackboard of ideas behind and later took to drinking to came up with his top winners-
Rum Rum Raisin(left) and Tira-miss-u.

One press article about him quoted him verbatim about how he came into the business. The usual blah-blah about an ex-teacher, getting edgy on his seat about challenges in life and wanting to “try something own his own”. So David Yim went into the business of making ice cream, just because he likes to makan. Again, blah blah stuff, but his ice creams are anything but. In the first three minutes of our chat, I realized that this is an intelligent creature who once stared up at the light from the bottom of the proverbial well. Except, he ain’t no frog and he took that leap out.

He landed on a new horizon with aims of setting up an ice cream boutique, and he can’t “cook for nuts”. And he dug in deep, with only the confidence he obtained from “handling Speech Days, fundraising campaigns and organizing musicals” at his old teaching stint at a secondary school in Yishun, he set up Udders Ice Cream (yeah, if only it was so simple). He was self taught and learnt the craft of making ice creams from books, the internet and experimenting, and went out to conquer, with a war chest of about $150,000. “I realized that many were way ahead of me in the market and I needed to be different”. By different, he meant he had to cut across the thick competition with entrenched and established players like Island Creamery, Daily Scoop and even Tom’s Palate. David went the alcoholic route “I decided to offer extras with an adult edge, with alcoholic ice creams, and I don’t even drink”. So began his alcoholic research work.

The Kopi-C and the Champion Chempedak ice cream was like
having kopi-c with chempedak fritters, except creamier.

Firstly, I will cruise his “non-adult” range. His Mao Shan Wang durian ice cream is just what it says it is. This thing comes with that supreme durian bit and fibre and the dangerous part is he put in less sugar to fool you with a “healthier” sensation. But wait till you get a load of the fat and cream he loads it with, “over ten and below twenty percent” he offers (sinful international brands put in about 16%). I think this one hovers at about eighteen. Not that I care because to me, this is the proper way to sin with ice cream. On any given day, they offer around 28 flavours and they are all inspirations he obtains from customers. The chalk wall at his Thomson Road outlet is scribbled full with customers suggestions which includes weird and wonderful stuff like wasabi, kimchi, strawberry champagne sorbet and even Korean ginseng flavour. “I let them vote with a point system and we usually introduce the top choice of every month”. So, you will find local inspirations like Kopi-C Ecstasy (really rich and feels like kopi-c), Green Tea-rrific (has that sharp tanin green tea feel smoothened by cream), Gula Melaka (which was a bit off for me and the milk does not sit well with palm sugar as an ice cream, although I like bobo cha cha), and of course Champion Chempedak (with generous bits of the fruit).

But the best part- his alcoholic range. His Rum Rum Raisin was what brought the crowds in (after six months of waiting for the business tsunami to reign in). I am not a fan of rum nor raisin, but he named it with two rums because it has the highest alcohol percentage in his range- 7% (which was what numbed and comforted me when I had a scoop of it). But I surrendered to his Tira-Miss-U which had cognac and brandy with real mascarpone cheese. The sprinkling of cinnamon dust atop was like just saying “demolish me”. It was rich and sinful and not cloyingly sweet.

So, I asked the obvious- what if kids ate them and he replied with a well rehearsed politically right statement, “I won’t sell alcoholic ice creams to underaged kids, BUT, if their parents bought it and fed it to them, who am I to stop them.”