By Elliott West
“Ice cream will never be the same”.
Dame Judi Dench
Introduction
If you want to try the best ice cream in the world, then a trip to Wales is essential. For Wales is the Elysium for ice cream, thanks to the migration of Italian families in the 19th century. They came at the height of the industrial revolution and brought with them a unique Italiano café culture, setting up shop in the green Welsh valleys and serving countless coal, steel and dock workers. These cafes and ice cream parlours were known as ‘Bracchis’, named after one of the most well-known Italian-Welsh families and helped grow a deep love for ice cream with carts and parlours becoming a common site in this Celtic province.
The Ice Cream Story
In 1898, an Italian peasant called Luigi Cascarini set off from his home in the Abruzzi mountains of Southern Italy intending to travel through Europe and onto America. Arriving at Le Havre, he took a coal steamer bound for Swansea. When he got there, Luigi realised that there wasn’t a single café for the thirsty and hungry workers in the community and promptly abandoned his plans to carry on his travels. So began his masterplan, to set up a café that would serve coffee from dawn to dusk. Using a loan, borrowed from an Italian friend, he opened a general food shop in Swansea, hard-working and motivated, Cascarini opened at 4 am and had a prime catchment area as his shop was along the route for the workers heading towards the munitions factory in Bridgend.
What made his shop stand out and was a massive selling point, was his ice cream. Made from fresh milk, sugar and cornflour, some described it as resembling wallpaper paste but people bought it and his business flourished. Luigi had an envious work ethic, working every hour of the day to make his business a success. So successful was his shop, that he was able to open five more, bringing over his eldest son Joe from Italy to Wales in 1922. His son helped him set up his café at 85 St Helen’s Road. So iconic was this Italian business that the original shop is still there.
Joe decided to concentrate solely on ice cream and this is probably why his original shop survived while the other five failed to survive the family tree. So Joe’s ice cream was born and after the Second World War, he went on a quest to create the perfect ice cream. This Italian entrepreneur ditched the cornflour and started making his ice cream solely from dairy products. This followed him trialling over 40 types of milk, believing each one had its own individual taste and characteristic. Joe settled on a combination of five different types of milk, with sugar, a stabiliser and vanilla extract. This same recipe remains to this day.
There are now three Joe’s ice cream parlours, the original in St Helen’s Road, nearby Mumbles and one in Llansamlet. There are also shops in Cardiff and Llanelli. Joe’s ice cream is unique because it is only sold in vanilla flavour. Other flavours are then added to the ice cream. In 1960 Joe fell ill and so his sister Delia helped run the business. Enrico Cascarini took on the production of the ice cream at St Helen’s. Delia Cascarini then took over the business in 1968 when Joe died.
The Problem
The problem with Joe’s ice cream is that it only has a shelf life of a day and can not be frozen. However, Enrico came up with an ingenious solution, creating a soft scoop version of the vanilla gelato so that customers could take it home and freeze it. So successful was this invention that he developed other flavours including a chocolate version in 1994, his chocolate version won the most prestigious industry award in the UK, the Ice-Cream Alliance’s Champion of Champions Cup. Enrico moved his ice cream production to Swansea Enterprise Park in 1996 and subsequently won the National Ice Cream Alliance Awards for three consecutive years for his cappuccino, mint chocolate chip, vanilla and raspberry ripple flavours. Enrico died in 2022, aged 86. The business is now run by Adrian and Dominic Hughes, direct family members and is still as popular as it ever was. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dame Judy Dench and Prince William have all visited the shops.
