Real Turkish ice cream isn’t like other ice cream. Along with cream, sugar, and flavorings, proper maraş dondurması is made with salep, the ground-up roots of a wild orchid native to the country. Salep—which comes from an Arabic phrase meaning “fox testicles”—contains a kind of starch that gives dondurma a particularly elastic consistency, allowing people stretch it into giant ropes and even cut it with chainsaws.
In Istanbul, the street-side ice cream vendors pound away at the dessert all day with long metal rods, working it like a bread dough. And when tourists come to buy a scoop, the vendors break out their showmanship and put on an elaborate act, utilizing the peculiar qualities of dondurma to perform a seamless series of magic tricks. You have to work for your cone.
Videos by VICE
If only David Blaine were as talented.
A vendor at Taksim Mix. Photos by Monique Jaques.
The scene at Maraş Dövme Dondurma.
Taksim Mix in the daytime.
This article originally appeared on MUNCHIES on September 9, 2014.
