fabulous indian ice creams — sadly, not so fabulous after all

hi – sorry for the massive backlog and no posting… there is a TON of good eating that’s been going on, but we are only just back from the “honeymoon” travel-thon and then i was sick for a week. That sucked, but i am feeling normal now for the first time in months, so i should be able to start in on the posts shortly.
however.
in the meantime, we were walking down Moody Street this weekend, and stopped into Patel Brothers, and checked out their ice cream selection, and holy moly. Saffron-pistachio. At least 3 distinct varieties of kulfi. Cashew-raisin. And lots more, including some Latin-tropical fruit flavors that appear to be locally produced, if not entirely handmade in someone’s kitchen. We couldn’t buy any right then, but we are totally going back sometime this week. YUM.
UPDATE: Sadly, ALL of the ice creams we tried were no good. Boo hoo hoo! The saffron pistachio was the best of the lot, and it had so much saffron in it that it tasted like gasoline. Drat. All of them were afflicted with textural problems, as if they’d been melting and refreezing every day for a month, and some of them augmented their ice crystals with a sketchy chalky sort of feeling in the mouth. We tried an Alphonso Mango flavor in the gorgeous fancy packaging, same as the Saffron Pistachio, and even that was strangely flat, which may be the creamier variety of mango (versus the tart kind Americans are used to), but even so it wasn’t worth eating again because of the texture issue. The rose flavor in the less-fancy brand was just plain bad and we threw it out on the spot (the others got a reprieve of a few days in the freezer during which we felt no desire to eat them again, whereupon they got the boot as well).
Sadness. Despair. Oh well — i suppose one can always go to Toscanini’s and get perfectly lovely kulfi ice cream, and i bet they would do a saffron-pistachio special order if you were to ask them nicely….