G and D Ice Cream cafe Oxford.

Good coffee is always welcome.  Good coffee served in an independent café which bills itself as an Ice Cream Café has me salivating at the world of coffee break opportunities.

I have The Geek God to thank for introducing me to G & D's Ice Cream Café- The Geek God has similar priorities to me when it comes to food and drink so I knew it was going to be good.

The Geek God also tipped me off to the fact that they make Stout flavour ice cream.  Naturally this set my curiosity meter to 'high'- would this work? would it be good? if the stout flavours included coffee, would it be a match made in heaven with an Americano? or would I be disappointed and wish I had gone for chocolate ice cream and an overall mocha taste theme?

The first sensation was unsurprisingly a hit of icy smoothness, followed by a definite hoppy tang, with underlying bitterness, and a pervasive creaminess (again unsurprisingly).  I was impressed, the combination of ice cream and stout worked very well even if it did lack the predicted coffee flavours.  That was amply made up for by my coffee which was obviously made from freshly ground beans and served at my perfect strength. Taking a sip of coffee before the ice cream also left heat in my mouth to help melt the ice cream...mmmm.

I'm also left wondering whether a grown-up ice cream float would work, replacing the lemonade with stout.  I will try this out in miniature on some willing friends and report back!

So 9/10 for G&D's, with their excellent food and drinks complemented by a relaxed yet buzzing atmosphere, complete with the scattering of self-consciously cool/studious people you'd expect in Oxford: essay crises via Jack Wills.

This is the website for G&D's:
http://gdcafe.com/FrontPage/frontPage.htm

Waitrose Stem Ginger Ice Cream

Mmmmmmmm No picture of this one so you're going to have to conjure up your own image!

Imagine you have a mouth full of ice cream- quite light in consistency and very basic (but oh so good) in flavour: no vanilla, no nothing, just cream.

But this light cream is the perfect base to hold chunks of zingy crystallised ginger, which adds a spicy bite and a sugary crunch. And some of the ginger is inside dark chocolate, which you have to bite off (or melt off) going through rich cocoa to find the ginger. All inside the cream.

Perfect. Not too sweet or rich or spicy or chocolately but still assertively flavoured with a great texture. In fact so good, I have just upgraded my rating from a 7 to 8/10.