Something very good is happening in Pardes Hanna. In recent years the culinary scene in the moshava – whose name used to come up first when talking about anti-vaxxers – is blooming and thriving. Alongside restaurants with well-known reputations, excellent cafés have sprung up like mushrooms after the rain, alongside sinful patisseries. So I wasn’t surprised that the ice cream niche also wasn’t left behind when a new player arrived in the moshava – “Shamna.”
The Shamna ice cream shop was opened last August by Yair Rot and Liad Shmueli, who have been making ice cream for a few years under another label called Studio Gelato and distributing it to restaurants and delicatessens. If you thought this is a regular ice cream shop – think again, because Shamna offers a completely different experience from anything you’ve known and tasted until today, and it definitely justifies the crazy hype created around it.
This is handmade ice cream, produced every day on site behind a transparent kitchen and from local, fresh ingredients that arrive directly from the producer or farmer. In the display you can choose between 22 special, original and refreshing flavors where seasonality sets the tone, including carrot cake, corn and popcorn, chocolate balls and tea biscuits, mascarpone lemon zest crumble, almonds and cinnamon, citrus chili, pistachio, honey, banana brownies, coconut, and even labaneh, olive oil and za’atar. The toppings such as bread pudding, brownies and chocolate chip cookies are baked by a full-time pastry chef, and there is also a wonderful tiramisu that precedes itself by reputation – but we’ll get to that later.
At Shamna the gelato is kept in pozzetti containers like in Italy, and instead of colorful plastic spoons and disposable cups you will receive metal spoons and stainless-steel bowls that were cooled in the refrigerator ahead of time so the ice cream won’t melt, out of a desire to provide a perfect eating experience and, of course, for ecological reasons.
“An inseparable part of all of this is the decision to have minimum waste. Everything is reusable and made of stainless steel. Every person who comes in leaves 7–8 spoons and a cup or two. There’s a dishwasher here who washes thousands of spoons a day,” says Shmueli. “Beyond sustainability it also shows how much investment there is in the product itself; you can’t after all this give someone a cardboard cup and a plastic spoon. It simply cannot happen. It must get the right serving so that it is complete,” Rot adds.
The staff is kind, patient and charming, and will be happy to let you taste the flavors in the display before making a decision which flavors to choose, and believe me it’s hard, while the spoons you tasted from can be placed in a designated spot set aside for that.
So how did it all begin?
“‘Studio Gelato’ was established with the goal of producing ice cream and knowing how to build a strong operational and logistical system around it. Very high-quality ice cream, of course,” says Rot. “We really love it and felt we had a vision and desire to produce also for the private market, for the street, to really touch people. From that place we began building this vision called ‘Shamna,’ with the goal of creating a slightly different value in the world of ice cream – a value of hospitality, freshness, earth, locality. Slowly we developed it over a very long time, layer by layer, sector by sector, from the product through the design to the hosting experiences, the utensils, until Shamna came into the world.”
Who thought of the name?
Shmueli: “It was important to us that the name be in Hebrew, that the Israeli character would be expressed. The origin is ‘shmana u-salta’ (‘the crème de la crème’), we had difficulty with the ‘salta’ because it gives a slightly arrogant connotation and we were afraid of that. It’s exactly the opposite of what we wanted to show. We wanted to create a place that hosts, where the person serving knows where the ice cream came from, from which dairy, from where the raw material came. ‘Shmana u-salta’ is exactly what ‘Shamna’ offers and that’s why ‘Shamna’ is a perfect abbreviation for our vision.”
Rot adds: “We wanted it to be easier on the tongue and fun to say.”
When asked where the ideas for the special flavors came from, Rot replied: “We’ve been doing this for years and dreaming about it for years. We also travel a lot around the world and really love culinary. We had many ideas we knew we’d come out with. We know many producers who’ve been with us for years; many times the flavor starts from the producer. This producer, for example, has yogurt, so that yogurt will be with us. We have a honey producer from Gan-Haim we’ve worked with for years, we had no doubt it would fit in. From there it rolls. We’re a seasonal gelateria and I think that’s one of the messages we bring with us.”
“If you look at our flavor display you won’t see strawberry, because strawberries are only now beginning to ripen and we need ours more matured and that will take a bit more time,” Rot explains. “Once we have a connection to producers they make things especially for us. For example, the yogurt – it’s yogurt that isn’t sold in stores; it’s made especially for ‘Shamna.’ If it’s mango, then it’s mango that we chose from a specific plot, and once it’s ours we control the process not only of production but also of cultivation. We tell the farmer at what point it’s right for it to reach us.”
Shmueli adds: “Sometimes flavors are created because people approach us with suggestions; right now we’re working on exactly such a thing.”
According to Rot, creating flavors is something unique in the landscape of ice cream shops. “We go all the way with it. For example, carrot cake flavor – the pastry chef bakes carrot cake from the carrots. We squeeze carrot juice and also add it to the ice cream, and from the carrot pulp, to reduce food waste, we make a tuile, like a cracker, that we put in the ice cream. For the experience to be complete we also make the frosting like in carrot cake. Every flavor here receives tons of thought, development, thinking about how it contributes to us and to the environment. Everything happens here from scratch.”
According to Shmueli, “What makes us happiest is how right this is for an audience that is thirsty for ice cream that is Israeli. Even though it has all the advantages of Italian ice cream, it’s also and mainly an ice cream shop you enter and take in everything produced here. It’s a vision we’ll run with and it will continue to grow.”
Beyond the excellent and meticulous ice cream, one of the reasons people from all over the country flock to the place is the wonderful tiramisu that makes you momentarily confused and think you’re in Italy. “Many people come especially for the tiramisu which luckily caught on beautifully; they’re not interested in the ice cream. They come locked onto that,” Shmueli admits. And there’s more good news: Due to demand, Shamna is also working on a “take-away” tiramisu that people will be able to take home.
After tasting and delighting in the flavors, textures and aesthetics, I had to check one last thing – what is the flavor that Israelis love most. “Anything I say that isn’t pistachio will be a lie, but let’s put it aside, because it’s the ‘ace’ of ice creams,” says Rot. “With us, the best-seller that has become the place’s signature is the mascarpone ice cream. We get fresh stunning mascarpone from Meshek Ivri who are partners in the journey – a connection of years. Our ice cream is also sold there. It’s mascarpone ice cream with oil from lemon peels, and on top we put a butter crumble that we bake on site.”
So to sum up, not only eternal calm, eucalyptus in the breeze whistling a Canaanite blues and a variety of excellent restaurants and cafés – now in Pardes Hanna there is also the “best and finest ice cream” I’ve tasted in the country, officially turning the small moshava into a culinary gem.
Shamna, Haoranim Street 20, Pardes Hanna-Karkur