Hannah Mitri is probably the oldest ice cream shop in Achrafieh if not in Beirut. They have been preparing ice cream since the 1940’s, and a lot of celebrities have visited them and tasted their special, freshly-made sorbets .The ice cream made without cream and eggs. Use only milk. To give it a density add a special powder  grated root orchid. Ice cream in which no synthetic component.

There are eight original flavors: four milk-based and four sorbets. Milk is the distinctly Arabic flavor, made of milk that’s boiled for an hour or two with sahlab and mastic. Sahlab (also known as salep), is a sparkly white powder ground from the root tubers of the Mediterranean Orchis italica (inexplicably known as “the naked man orchid”). This mildly flavored starch thickens the milk. Mastic is a sun-dried tree resin (and the original ingredient for chewing gum), which Mitri brings from Greece. It gives the ice cream a slightly taffy-like texture.

The other milk-based flavors are: chocolate (rich, deep and very grown-up); pistachio (subtle in both color and flavor, but studded with bright nuts); and croquant (a milk ice cream, crunchy with homemade almond brittle, and one of Mitri’s best sellers). The traditional sorbets are: delicate rosewater; fresh, sharp lemon; strawberry, sweet with bits and seeds; and an intense apricot with pine nuts sprinkled throughout.

I would like to try the ice cream with a long history, and you?