Cool thrills: Gilfi ice cream company

Honeyed curry and vodka, turmeric and black pepper, gorgonzola ice-cream to accompany a cheese platter – these are just three of the original icy treats made by Gilfi ice-cream and patisserie company. Over the past 35 years the artisan enterprise in the heart of the Ardennes has developed a tantalising range of 200 classic and unusual flavours.

When visiting an ice-cream company, tasting is a pleasant task, and Benoît Gilson serves a generous scoop. He runs the family business with brother Eric, which explains the name of the company: Gilfi is an abbreviation of Gilson et fils or Gilson and sons. Benoît, 47, is responsible for the commercial activities, while his brother, a year older, looks after the admin. The pair have been managing the company since the early 1980s.

The speculoos ice-cream I taste is a Belgian favourite, along with classic flavours like vanilla, mocha and chocolate. But Gilfi is especially known for the gastronomic desserts it makes to order for restaurateurs who want to surprise customers with original ideas. They also demand high quality. “We have the expertise and technology here to translate concepts into innovative desserts,” explains Gilson.

The team of 12 at Gilfi includes four chefs, three of them pastry specialists. They love to experiment with flavours. “Brainstorming is a spontaneous process,” says Gilson. “If one of us has a reasonable idea, we create the flavour and taste. You can never be a hundred percent certain that a dessert will be a success but over the years we have developed a sense for it.”

Their experience has resulted in haute cuisine treats such as Roquefort cheese sorbet with pear, ricotta ice-cream with pink peppercorn and, recently, an exotic yuzu sorbet – based on the Asian citrus fruit. Gilson’s personal favourite is a caramel sorbet with salted butter, a flavour that is undeniably trendy in the dessert world. In addition to ice-creams and sorbets, Gilfi makes bavarois, icecream cakes and fruit coulis. These can be ordered for special occasions such as weddings, communions and end-of-year celebrations.

Although competition with more industrial competitors can be tough, it is Gilfi’s creativity that has earned it a stable place in the market. The team is also very flexible, which is practical for customers with last-minute orders, although Gilson hopes to expand in the future, to cater even more quickly to clients’ needs.

Furthermore, its products are always natural. For the past 20 years, the company has sourced its milk from the same local farm, and, as it has a dairy licence, it homogenises and pasteurises the milk itself. Making ice-cream is a two-day process. The combined ingredients are first cooked to 83 degrees, then cooled for four hours, before spending another four hours in a turbine. Once this process is completed, the ice-cream has a temperature of minus 7 degrees and is packaged in one-, 2.5- and fivelitre containers. Some flavours are also packaged in 125ml quantities. “We don’t make mass-production desserts. Because of our authentic way of working, our products have that special natural taste,” says Gilson.

Gilfi recently underlined its commitment to natural ingredients by joining Faircoop, an organisation of 500 milk producers who strive for sustainable agriculture through solidarity and fair pricing. With organic milk from the cooperative Biolait, Gilfi has created the new ice-cream label Fairebel, with vanilla, dame blanche and pure milk flavours. The range is available in Carrefour, Intermarché and Champion supermarkets. The European commissioner for agriculture and rural development, Dacian Ciolos, and the Walloon minister for agriculture and infrastructure, Carlo Di Antonio, were at the launch in April. For the past four years Gilfi has operated from a business park near Francorchamps in the Ardennes. It moved to the larger, better-equipped building after previous facilities in the area became too small. From here, Gilfi principally produces desserts for the Walloon and Brussels market. “But recently, we are exporting more and more abroad, to Germany, France, Luxembourg, Cyprus and the Netherlands, among other countries,” says Gilson.

The company’s origins, however, lie in Namur, where the brothers’ father took over a small ice-cream business 35 years ago. A year later, they moved to an atelier in Francorchamps, the family’s home base. Benoît Gilson, then 12 years old, remembers how ice-cream became more than a summer refreshment: “It was fantastic to always have these treats around,” he smiles. “I didn’t even mind helping out after school or working here in the summer.”

Even after all this time, Gilson continues to enjoy the different flavours every day. “It’s not a professional obligation to check the quality of our products, but it’s still a thrill to try out all these new exciting flavours,” he says.

www.gilfi.be

This article first appeared in WAB Magazine.