By Aarav Mahendru

Minimal, which is the only ice cream shop in the entire globe, offers a unique experience to anyone visiting Taichung, Taiwan. The establishment is placed next to Calligraphy Greenway boulevard. Although it blends with the city architecture, Minimal is incredibly easy to miss. Its rich, stone gray coloring, and ambient lights offer a comforting experience when you step into the sub-zero world. 

Arvin Wan, the founder of Minimal, is truly the Ice Chef. His passion for the creation and delicacies of ice run deep, much past his culinary expertise. “My family had a double-door refrigerator with an installed ice-maker. I’d eat ice cubes every day,” he says. As a young boy Wan began experimenting with different foods by analyzing their outcomes when frozen. 

He did not realize that it would turn into his profession. 

Wan graduated from culinary school, pursuing his passion for food. Soon after, his mother passed away with cancer, and reflecting on the experience Wan recalls that he “didn’t spend much time with her. (and) I reflected a lot — if I continued on my current path, I wouldn’t have time for people I cherish in the future.” Given this, he decided to quit his job as a chef and opened up an ice cream parlor. That was in 2014. 

Fast-forward 2 years and Wan is recruited by his friend to start a modern Taiwanese Restaurant called Sur. Wan was the head pastry chef and continued to explore his passion for desserts. Although Sur was, and still is, an amazing restaurant (earning its own Michelin Star in 2021), Wan wanted to go back to his roots. The ice called to him. 

His experience at Sur only helped him to further his experience of the culinary world, and allowed him to open his own shop, Minimal, in 2021.  

The ground floor of his ice cream shop is just like any other. Minimal adheres to its title, offering only 6 flavors year round. They are the most unique, interesting and tasteful flavors on the planet. Some include pine seed with Camellia seed oil, specific green Taiwanese herbs, and sugarcane. 

This floor alone gives you the experience of a lifetime, but it does not end there. 

The second floor offers 20 seats, and serves a seven-course menu. The core menu does not change throughout the year, but as any Michelin restaurant does there are seasonal changes to ingredients. 

Each dish is assigned nomenclature based on the temperature it is served at. The menu begins with a 0 (C) pear, and continues with the only hot meal served, a rice dumpling sandwich. The course furthers itself deeper into Taiwanese ingredients, culture and tastes by offering various ice creams, gelatos and even lollipops. The total course time is around 2 ½ hours long, and offers ample time to digest and experience the environment. 

Although everything is prepared wonderfully on the plate, as with any other restaurant there are challenges to maintain things, especially at sub-zero. One of the hardest problems is keeping everything fresh. 

To create textures in the ice cream, Wan essentially figures out methods to inject gas into the space. The lollipop, for example, melts much slower than ice and feels like a fluffy piece of cotton. Wan also keeps multiple fridges and freezers at different temperatures to experiment with, and allows him to give his team time to plate and explain the dishes to the guests. 

One of the hardest things to get right is the tastes and smells. 

“Most ice doesn’t have a lot of aroma because fragrance is very inactive below zero,” he mentions. “To overcome that, I have to complement it with some other ingredients to create a more complex nose and taste that reminds you of the theme of the dessert.” 

He will add mint, or lime to mix into the ice in order to exemplify the aroma that is subtle to our noses. Herbs and other green mixtures are applied to amplify the tastes of what is within the sub-zero temperatures. 

“I still eat ice cream almost every day. Most of the time, I eat really cheap ice treats like qing bing (a retro dessert made of water and banana flavoring served as shaved ice or in popsicle form). They’re a no-brainer for me,” says Wan.

Although Wan has now developed a successful business and has earned the highest award given to restaurants, he is still that once young kid at heart.