It’s hard to say what puts the biggest smile on the faces of The Galley Creamery & Deli customers in Woodbridge: its intriguing ice cream flavours, or the infectious enthusiasm of its owner.
The former may include avocado, lemon & jalapeno; spiced pumpkin & apple; poppy seed & Madeira raisins – even pear, walnut & Gorgonzola.
The latter – Turkish-born Ugur Vata – welcomes customers in with a booming voice, an obvious passion for hospitality, and a greeting that makes you feel that he’s an old friend, rather than someone you’ve just met for the first time.
Vata opened The Galley Creamery & Deli on Market Hill around five years ago. Its bold blue frontage and decorated windows certainly give the place some kerb appeal. There are a few tables directly outside – and a few more further away in the market square – to enjoy your purchases in the sunshine.
Inside, there’s a tall freezer filled with tubs of ice cream to take away, and an incredible display of ready-to-scoop flavours directly ahead. Vata makes every single flavour on-site, using local milk. There are no artificial colours or flavourings involved, and his creations have even attracted celebrity visitors (including Benedict Cumberbatch and Griff Rhys Jones in recent years).
Choosing your flavour(s) will be the hard part. When we visited, there were over 20 varieties on offer, ranging from the more “normal” (strawberry, lemon sorbet, vanilla) to flavours like ruby chocolate, Horlicks, and those I mentioned earlier.
Don’t fancy an ice cream or sorbet? There are also hot chocolates, milkshakes and more on offer – and a variety of homemade mezze dishes and alcoholic drinks to take away, too.
We were there purely with ice cream in mind. Unsurprisingly, my son chose a scoop of Oreo and was impressed. The ice cream itself was luxuriously creamy, the Oreo chunks plentiful.
The pistachio was even better still. Muted green in colour, it actually tasted like real pistachios: nothing artificial here.
My choice was the hot cross bun, which was a triumph. It was packed full of fried fruits and peel, real hot cross bun flakes, and plenty of warming clove flavour. It genuinely did taste like a hot cross bun in ice cream form.
Of course, I’d normally get a picture of what we actually ate, but I failed. This blurry one will give you an idea of scoop sizes, though, and it makes the charismatic Ugur Vata the centre of attention 😉
At around £4 a scoop, the ice cream at The Galley Creamery & Deli certainly isn’t the cheapest. It’s well worth the price, though. With quality ingredients, exciting flavours and an owner who made us all smile, I’m looking forward to heading back to The Galley Creamery & Deli to try some more of Vata’s concoctions…