Sorvetes Bárbaros, the ice cream shop that uses ingredients from the Brazilian Amazon

Many of the ingredients from the Amazon are as exotic, or unknown, in the rest of Brazil as they are abroad.

Things that happen in a continental country with huge distances like this one.

At Sorvetes Bárbaros, an ice cream parlor that has been open for six months in São Paulo, Amazonian flavors are one of the hallmarks of its identity that distinguishes it from the rest, but there is more.

What really pushes the couple that runs this business is to honor and popularize the Amazonian culinary heritage, put conventions to the test, innovate, and create delicious ice cream in an artisanal and sustainable way with local products.

And, of course, spending time with her five-year-old son, Otto.

The first joint venture between Mauricio Pardo, 48, a former history teacher who is now in charge of turning his wife's creations into ice cream, and Milene Ribas, a 47-year-old confectioner and cook, was selling the

, homemade truffles that are offered in any corner of Brazil.

It is a way to get money for hundreds of thousands of Brazilians who cannot find a better job.

At that time they lived in Manaus, the main city of the Brazilian Amazon, a city that grows fast and in a disorderly way.

She cooked them and he sold them on the bus on the way to her classes.

Then they had a market stall with jams and breads.

“Many of the flavors were born there,” they recall.

And before the ice cream shop, they had a pastry shop in Manaus that was such a success that it devoured their lives.

One day they decided to hit the brakes, they closed it and took a break because they wanted to have a child.

And here is Otto, who although he is the son of ice cream makers, he does not take them every day.

Ice creams with flavors of the Amazon from Sorvetes Bárbaros. Lela Beltrão

At Sorvetes Bárbaros they offer many flavors born in the largest tropical forest in the world (a crucial ecosystem to stop the climate emergency), but also other non-Amazonian and unconventional ones.

In the window of their establishment they have cupuaçu ice cream (a fruit), chestnut from the Amazon or Pará (a dry fruit), cumarú (a seed known as Amazonian vanilla), black tucupí (a typical sauce from the indigenous to the jungle, where it accompanies fish), pupunha (the fruit of a palm tree), smoked chocolate with pepper (one of the stars of the assortment) or pineapple with jambu (a plant that numbs the tongue).

“We are not a thematic ice cream parlor, we are a reflection of the place we come from.

That is why we have so many Amazonian flavors”, explains Pardo.

He is from Manaus, and also, caboco, that is,

descendant of inhabitants of the jungle fruit of the miscegenation between indigenous people and whites;

Ribas, from São Paulo.

A combination that also explains the path they chose for their business, which they moved to São Paulo a few months ago.

A story behind each bite

The tingling that the smoked chocolate ice cream with pepper leaves in the mouth is a good example of their way of working, as they not only investigate flavors, but also sensations.

Upon discovering the organic pepper that the Baniwa women produced, they decided to create this custom ice cream for her.

The Baniwa are an indigenous ethnic group from the upper Rio Negro, in the area of ​​São Gabriel da Cachoeira, which is 800 kilometers from Manaus, or between two and four days by boat upriver.

The Pardo-Ribas found out about their existence thanks to the Brazilian chef Álex Atala, who has been working for years to make Amazonian products known, and the Socio-environmental Institute, an NGO that, among other missions, is dedicated to encouraging sustainable products produced by aborigines. have a commercial outlet and provide them with income.

The owners of Sorvetes Bárbaros get the raw material from the Amazon thanks to a supplier that brings fruits, seeds, pulp and other fresh ingredients from this Amazon, which is as big as the entire EU.

And the distance between Manaus and São Paulo, only a little more than Madrid-kyiv.

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It took them seven years to create the black tucupí ice cream, the one born from the sauce that is eaten with fish, another of those flavors from the Amazon that dazzles their clientele in São Paulo.

On the other hand, customers from Manaus preferred ingredients from far away, which are exotic there.

An idea that connects with the name they chose for their business.

It's called Sorvetes Bárbaros because that adjective in Spanish means delicious, sensational.

But also because it was for centuries an expression of the colonizers to refer to the others, the non-civilized.

The confectioner says that, beyond her technical knowledge after 25 years in the trade, being a São Paulo native in Manaus gave her enormous freedom to experiment with local products.

"Since she was an outsider, she could break the rules."

And so the flavor of sweet

was born from the fruit of a palm tree whose meat is the heart of palm.

“I create new flavors with my experience and my intuition,” she emphasizes.

“If I followed confectionery literature, I wouldn't find anything we do.

It would be safe, but do the usual.

We like to get out of the comfort zone.

Mauricio Pardo and MIlene Ribas at their Sorvetes Bárbaros Ice Cream Parlor, in São Paulo. Lela Beltrão

Every week the assortment of flavors changes depending on the seasons, the raw material that comes from the Amazon or the juiciest thing they find in the neighborhood market.

Ribas longs for the taste of pineapple from Manaus.

“Unmatched.

It's impossible to find anything like it in São Paulo,” she sighs.

They rotate to offer fifteen flavors among the 80 that they have created together.

Pardo recounts that one day he came home and proposed to his partner: "Come on, let's create an ice cream: I give you an ingredient, you say another, and we tried it: 'I said jambú (an analgesic plant), she pineapple ”.

And

, for 12 reais (just over two euros) you can have a pineapple ball with jambú.

Boxes of different flavors of ice cream from Sorvetes Bárbaros. Lela Beltrão

They serve the ice cream accompanied by a delicate wafer in paper bowls, not in a cone.

The confectioner explains that it has raw sugar (unrefined), butter, eggs and wheat flour.

“With that recipe I only manage to make it flat.

In order to turn it into a cone I need to develop it, but that takes research time that we don't have right now.

Sometimes it takes me a year to create a recipe.”

It is another of the projects they have in mind, waiting for the right moment.

Facade of Sorvetes Bárbaros. Lela Beltrão