A taste test of Omoré’s premium ice cream
Being an adult is great! I don’t have to ask anyone if I can buy two flavors of the latest Omoré ice cream. Though my family looks on with wide-eyed horror as I sit down to a taste test of a total of 1600 ml of ice cream in the name of research.
Omoré boasts Premium Diary Ice Cream in Tiramisu and Strawberry Cheesecake flavors. Yes, I do mean, boasts. Not all ice cream manufacturers have the audacity to write ‘ice cream’ on their packaging. To do so would imply the use of diary products so the legally non-binding term ‘frozen dessert’ is used instead. Since there is no Consumer Protection Agency or Food and Drug Administration to oversee these issues we’ll have to take Omoré on its word. Doing so shouldn’t be too hard since Olper’s is the sister company of Omoré which is the dairy range of products; both are owned by Engro Foods. If the ad campaign for Olper’s is anything to go by, well then, slender-waisted, pouty lipped, village belles collect milk from their cows and offer it to the pagan gods of the corporate world. Just saying.
The packaging of Omoré is identical to Häagen Dazs with its gold lid and maroon carton and, as you would suspect, all similarities end here. The clever ploy of similar packaging is playing on customer sensibilities to purchase a superficially up-market product. At Rs.350 (US$4) for an 800 ml carton it is pretty steep but obviously cheaper than foreign ice creams that have flooded the markets - Ben & Jerry’s (Rs225/ US$2.60 for single serving), Pierre’s (Rs 1000/ US$ 8.60 for a large pack) and Baskin Robbins (sorry haven’t bought it, yet).
As for the flavors, names can be a little misleading. Tiramisu is a great Italian dessert made with mascarpone cheese (an Italian cream cheese), espresso, ladyfinger cookies and eggs. Think of it as an Italian trifle, it’s consumed as a mid day snack to stave off an afternoon lull and get you through the day. Thus, the name Tiramisu or ‘pick me up’.
A swirl of strawberry sauce greets you when you open the pack and flecks of graham cracker crumbs add texture
Omoré’s Tiramisu ice cream’s initial taste is full of the coffee flavor unique to Tiramisu but it will be too overwhelming for palettes seeking a sweeter ice cream taste. After the wave of coffee/ chocolate dissipates, you’re left with the tasteless white paste of ice cream - the seemingly standard issue base for all of Omoré’s ice creams. The ladyfinger bits are neither ladyfingers nor bits rather a miserly amount of cake crumbs. The blasphemers at this company have used brownies. A brownie in tiramisu, for shame! Omoré’s Tiramisu ice cream gives you a promising start with this flavor which quickly reaches its anti-climax.
Strawberry Cheesecake is another flavor mutated into frozen dessert form. A true cheesecake is all about the texture; the cream cheese mix which bakes to a creamy dense delight. It’s actually nothing like cake and the graham cracker base gives it a pie quality. A swirl of strawberry sauce greets you when you open the pack and flecks of graham cracker crumbs add texture but that’s it. Not even the tang of cream cheese? Nope, just the fear of white paste posing as ice cream.
Omoré seems to have taken out everything a person could love about cheesecake and make an ice cream out of remainders. Another thing, I am a cheesecake purist. Please leave out the berries, cookies and chocolates from my cheesecake. Even bakeries today revel in adding Oreos to everything, especially this particular cake. The only thing I want Oreos to do is briefly meet my milk before finding its eternal resting place in my mouth.
Omoré, Igloo, Wall’s, et al should first acknowledge local palettes
That’s what a cheesecake shouldn’t do. Another thing it shouldn’t do is become an ice cream. But Omoré wants to find that niche market and it tries really hard to do that. They spend a great deal of money on ad campaigns shot in Thailand and Malaysia. I can’t say this for sure but I know that none of the kids look like Pakistanis I’ve seen. Where Omoré truly fails is giving its customers a good product. The first Omoré campaign whets the appetite with its funky kaleidoscope ad. It had a test run in some cities before launching a full fledged attack on the ice cream market. Surprisingly Karachi was not one of their initial test markets.
Omoré, Igloo, Wall’s, et al should first acknowledge local palettes, which they try to do with flavors such as Kulfi (our beloved national dessert, if it’s not, it should be), Pista (pistachios, I have no idea why pista is everywhere, even in cookies with its accomplice the peanut), Tutti Frutti (a mysterious concoction of unidentifiable fruit chunks) and Mango (a fruit which is divine in its natural form). The problem is these are the only flavors all the ice cream companies recreate when trying to tantalize local palettes. It’s an endlessly winding conveyor belt of flavors.
By all means go local, go green, go Pakistani with ice cream. How about Saffron? Its delicate flavor and fragrance would do well paired with warm Gulab Jamun (can I be crass and say they’re almost like donut holes which have died and gone to sugar syrup heaven) or Ghajar ka Halwa (Carrot Halva)?
Until then, Omoré should save up on marketing and work towards bringing a better product to the market.
Great review. Some delectably hilarious choices of words, and thumbs up for the price comparison. After I read this I went to try the strawberry cheesecake cone. Slight tang provided by the strawberry syrup, nothing cheesy about the rest. But here's a thought, I had tiramisu at Cafe Flo recently and apparently that place knows its desserts, but it was pretty lame. Maybe the lameness of the ice cream reflects the lameness of taste that we are familiar with?
ReplyDeleteHey thanks for commenting madberrycow and a virtual hug for enjoying my post!
ReplyDeleteIt's great that you tried the ice cream after reading this. Tastes are ones own and it's all about what your personal preference is. I haven't had the Cafe Flo tiramisu but I usually find restaurant tiramisu soggy and lacking flavor. Armeen's bakery has the best tiramisu and Pie in the Sky has the best Cheesecake.
Hey, great blog
ReplyDeleteI'm the editor of Sunday Times magazine - would you like to write a food review for us? E-mail me on stimespk@gmail.com if so! :)
Yep, you hit it pretty much on the mark there. I have had the strawberry cheesecake and I died and went to.. HELL!. The flavour reminded me of how my mouth feels after splashing it with Listerene in the morning: blah! I have had other Amore' products (sticks, cones) and they are just as blah. Olpers adds ground-up pits of dates to add thickness to it's milk. Freeze a glass of Olpers milk and then drink after thawing. You'll see what I mean. And the milk is so adulterated, that you can't even use it to make yogurt at home.
ReplyDeleteIt would be unfair to call Amore' even an ice cream, because I associate ice cream with a product that refreshes, that chills, that comforts, that invigorates.
Amore and all the rest of these sham-desserts actually make me sweat. I feel like I have just eaten a serving of khoya, or halva. It is quite amazing. You are eating a frozen product, which is making you feel like you just ate a pack of margarine.
If you like ice cream and are interested in (local) quality products, I would heartily recommend HICO. Try the strawberry/vanilla flavors. So cool, so smooth, so good. It's the only ice cream that comes close to the rich, creamy Hagen Daz.
Oh, and make sure you buy from a store that doesn't switch off their freezers at night (thus wreaking havoc on the frozen ice cream that lose their texture, taste and volume).
I stopped buying Ice cream by "Walls", 'cos Omore is just so damn good. It tastes more creamy too. :D
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