Salzburg: Organic ice-cream
Decent artisanal ice-cream made from organic milk has been readily available in Salzburg's inner city for years, but the first 100 percent organic gelateria opened only in March 2019: Höfingers Eisladen located next to Mozart's birth place at Universitätsplatz may be new as a light and pleasantly decorated ice-cream shop, but the Höfinger family has been making ice-cream in town since 1933. (Given the year I'd expected some historical details on the company's website, but unfortunately there are none.)
At present the ice-cream is being sold from the very plastic containers that the manufacturer also delivers to restaurants like Organic Pizza Salzburg, but the ice-cream tastes delightfully fresh and creamy and is well worth the 1.80 € the single scoop. Two scoops come at 3.40 €, three at 4.50 €, every additional flavour adds an extra 1.40 € to the bill. As for all other ice-cream makers in this blog post the ice-cream is heavier than you may be used from Italian gelaterie, and there's a range of flavours (like the poppy seed ice-cream) that are special to Austria.
The place is used by an organic confectioner's shop during the cold season – most of the ice-cream shops listed here re-open somewhen between mid of March and early April. However, the second Höflinger shop, the Kiosk "Unten am Fluss" at the Southern side of Marko-Feingold-Steg (the pedestrian bridge with the love locks) sold organic ice-cream already early in March, 2022.
The Höflinger shop also sells coffee drinks from a small home-sized coffee automat, but you may prefer to proceed next door to Fabi's Frozen Bio Yogurt located within the very building of Mozart's birthplace which sports a real bar-sized Italian pressure machine. This clean, no-frills ice-cream parlour uses organic milk, both for their extremely tasty frozen yogurt and the Italian-style coffee drinks.
In addition to the plain yogurt they occasionally have a passion fruit variety. Unfortunately the organic promise in the name of the place is restricted to the milk. Neither the toppings (with a notable exception of some caramelized nuts) nor the coffee sold here are organic. The yogurt comes in small, medium and large sizes, always in cardboard cups with a plastic spoon. So even if you choose to sit down with your frozen yogurt at one of their tables in- or outdoors you cannot avoid waste. This is not comprehensible as the coffee drinks are being served in creamware, and even worse: you pay less when taking it away in a one-way coffee cup.
During the cold season (which lasts from November through February/March) or on a (very) rainy day the only ice-cream made from organic milk comes from a local chain dubbed Icezeit and is offered by Cafe Timeless a few steps off the Linzergasse pedestrian area. Prices vary depending on the flavour: Basic ones like coffee come at 1.50 EUR the scoop, more elaborated ones like Rafaello (coconut-white chocolate) at 2.70 EUR.
Icezeit prefers fairly traded and sustainably grown ingredients, and runs several ice-cream shops both, north and south of the river Salzach during the warm season. Creamy, and with a mouth-watering selection of flavours ranging from the usual suspects to greek honey yogurt or peanut caramel, this ice-cream is hard to resist. Avoid the (additional) toppings you can buy on top as none of them are organic. They also have a frozen yogurt shop opposite the ice-cream parlour in Kaiviertel near Residenzplatz where you pay by weight, and in 2019 a new ice-cream shop opened in the tourist hotspot of Linzergasse.
All Icezeit shops keep open longer than given below when outside temperatures are high while you may find them closed on extremely bad weather days.
Almost side-by-side with the new Icezeit shop in Linzergasse you'll find the Salzburg branch of Eis-Greissler, a Kulmbach-based organic dairy farm producing their ice-cream from the milk of their own cows, often scented with organic spices from the Sonnentor farms (which by coincidence, have a shop next door).
The second fully organic ice-cream shop in town is located in the neighbourhood of Gneis and specializes in vegan ice-cream: The Veganer Eisladen is affiliated with The Green Garden restaurant, cafe and bar and a pleasant destination for a bicycle tour.
Ceased to exist
The following places do no longer exist, even though you still might find references to them on the web:
- Icezeit, Mirabellplatz 2
- Icezeit c/o Kiosk Sternbräu within Sternbräu garden between Griesgasse and Getreidegasse
- Icezeit Frozen Yogurt, Kaigasse 13
2022-05-25 14:00:00 [Salzburg, organic, vegan, ice-cream, frozen_yogurt] Link
