Mövenpick Ice Cream

Update Review

When I was in Zurich a few years ago, my office had an ice cream freezer stocked with Mövenpick ice cream.  I thought it was great.

So, this year, when I visited my Munich office and saw Mövenpick in their ice cream freezer, I had high hopes.  The ice cream novelties I tried lived up, the froyo ... not so much.

Froyo

Froyo is a new offering from Mövenpick.  All flavors are varieties of plain, tart frozen yogurt.  The most basic flavor is called "crispy", with strawberry and raspberry muesli on top in a separate container to mix in.  Kicking it up a notch is the "Exotic Fruit" flavor that I went for, that has exotic fruit sauce in the mix, and granola on top.  The final version is "Red Fruit Cookie", with a red fruit sauce, and little cookies to mix in.

Exotic Fruit Froyo.

I opted for the "Exotic Fruit", as it sounded most interesting.

It was ... ok.  The frozen yogurt was tart and not creamy, fairly icy, and nothing like the soft serve swirl depicted on the carton.

The exotic fruit sauce (passion fruit and mango?) was a little bit swirled on top.  It was fairly sour and a bit sweet.  There wasn't much of it.

On top was the little container of muesli. The little bits of dried fruit made it interesting, and I liked having crunch to mix in, but, this wasn't very good.

Ice Cream

Maple Walnuts Cone.

"Ein Waffel-Milcheis mit Ahornsirup, karamellisierten Walnüssen und einer mit Rum aromatisierten Kakaocreme."

That explains it right?

I didn't really care that I didn't know what this was, since I know Mövenpick makes good ice cream, and that was really all I cared about.

Plus, the English on it did say "Maple Walnuts", so, I expected it to have maple, and, well, walnuts, both things that sounded good to me.

Maple Walnuts Cone.

So, my cone.

On top was a drizzle of chocolate sauce, solid, crisp, tasty.

I think I expected maple walnut ice cream, but, instead, it seemed to just be vanilla (or possibly maple I guess, but, I didn't really taste maple at all).  The ice cream however was fantastic.  Slightly fluffy, creamy, really good stuff for a packaged product.

On top was caramelized walnuts, which, for some reason, I really didn't like.  I like walnuts, and I wanted them for crunch, but, they just really didn't do it for me.  They almost tasted bitter?

The cone was also notable.  It was the first packaged cone I've ever seen that looks like a handmade waffle cone.  That is, it isn't flat on top, instead, it has a seam and goes down into a triangle shape.  I should have taken a photo when I realized it.  Did it make the cone taste like a fresh waffle cone?  Obviously not, but, it really did make it look "fancier".

Overall, this ice cream was great, and I liked the chocolate sauce, but, alas, the walnuts didn't do it for me.  It restored my confidence in Mövenpick ice cream though, after the froyo.

Signature Chocolate Chips.

"Unsere beliebte Eiskreation umhüllt von zartschmelzender Milchschokolade."

This was fantastic!

Chocolate ice cream, studded with dark chocolate chunks, coated in chocolate shell.

The ice cream was very creamy and fluffy, the chocolate chunks added a deeper chocolate flavor, and the shell snapped nicely.  Overall, really tasty.

Original Review, May 2014

On my recent trip to Zurich I made a wonderful discovery: my office there has ice cream freezers everywhere.  Since I love ice cream, this was both awesome, and totally dangerous.  I'm sure the novelty of the ice cream freezers would wear off after a while, but I was only there for a few days, and I can assure you, I became very familiar with the locations of the ice cream freezers throughout the office.  The highlight was the Mövenpick ice cream, stocked in little tubs.

Mövenpick is a Swiss brand of ice cream, started in Zurich, originally just sold at a restaurant.  As the restaurant chain expanded, so did their ice cream production, although it remained manufactured only for the restaurants for a while.  Now it is commercially produced, owned by Nestlé, and distributed many places, although not available in the US.

They made 3 different ice cream lines: Classics, Delicés de Fruit, and Harmony.  The flavors I tried were all from the Classics line.

Every flavor I tried was insanely fluffy, yet rich, and very creamy.  The ice cream was best if allowed to melt for about 10 minutes after removing it from the freezer, as it got perfectly soft and melty.  Really, quite decent ice cream.  The individual little containers came with a classic plastic gelato spoon hidden in the lids.  While I sometimes get grumpy with these little spoons, they worked well here, allowing me to savor my ice cream, and the container size was just right, plenty to feel satisfied, but not a monstrous portion.

If I'm ever in a country with Mövenpick again, I'll certainly try more flavors.

Maple Walnut.

"Genuine Canadian maple syrup is the keynote ingredient in this very famous Mövenpick recipe– as flavour for the Swiss ice cream at its heart and flavour for the maple-syrup ripple. Caramelised walnuts add sweetness and crunch, their crispness maintained in a fashion that only a master ice-cream maker can achieve"

The ice cream base was very smooth and creamy, but tasted more like caramel to me than maple.  Many of their other flavors are caramel based, so I was surprised to have the maple taste so caramely, since this was supposed to be different.  It was ok, but I was really looking for a stronger maple flavor.
Maybe I'm just a snob that preferrers real Vermont maple syrup over Canadian :)

Double Crème de la Gruyère & Meringues.

Next, I tried the Double Crème de la Gruyère & Meringues.

Now, to step back a moment, I'll admit, I picked this up because it sounded crazy.  In my world, Gruyère is a cheese.  So I thought this was going to be cheesy ice cream.  Which sounded fascinating on its own, but then combined with meringues?  Crazypants.

Of course, I wanted to wait 10 minutes for it to get melty, during which time I read the rest of the package, once I could find the English description.

"An ice cream made with the famous Swiss double cream, sourced from a traditional producer of the dairy Gruyère region. A caramel coulis adds a sweet note of contrast, and fragments of meringues add a satisfying crunch."

Doh.  Gruyère is a region, and not just a cheese?  So uh, this was just going to be very creamy ice cream with meringues?  Far less exciting.

Double Crème de la Gruyère & Meringues - inside.

In the end, I'm glad I was mistaken, because otherwise, I would have never discovered this ice cream.  It was, hands down, my favorite of the Mövenpick flavors that I tried.

The ice cream was even more insanely smooth and creamy that the previous.  Incredibly rich from the double cream.  Yet somehow magically light and fluffy.  I have no idea how they achieved this consistency.  I love it.

Like many of their flavors, there was a caramel component, a sweet swirl throughout.  And tiny little bits of meringue, which, while not super exciting, did add a crunch, which was fun.

I'd gladly eat more of this one, and I was a bit sad when I reached the bottom.  Turns out, Gruyère makes more delicious things than just cheese.

Stracciatella.

And finally, I went for a classic, Stracciatella.

"Pure Swiss cream is the base for this exceptional rendering of panna ice cream, flattered by a generous scattering of finest dark-chocolate pieces."

I feel like a broken record here, but it was again insanely smooth and creamy.

Stracciatella is a pretty basic flavor, but this was done well.  I really liked the flecks of quality chocolate throughout.  My second favorite of the flavors I'd try, and I'd gladly eat it again.