What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear of cur­ry ice cream?

Well, when I first heard of the un­ortho­dox com­bi­na­tion I im­me­di­ate­ly trans­formed in­to Rud­yard Kipling and thought “0h, East is East, and West is West, and nev­er the twain shall meet.”

But luck­i­ly for De­lana Gray-Lewis, she did not think the way I did be­cause this strange mix has be­come a win­ning com­bi­na­tion for her.

Gray-Lewis is the own­er of Ice Cream Chef Lim­it­ed, and the cur­ry ice cream is one of her top four flavours.

The three oth­er flavours that have proven to be favourites among her cus­tomers are Co­cosop ( a mix­ture of co­conut and sour­sop), pump­kin co­conut, and char­coal.

Gray-Lewis al­so has oth­er eye-open­ing flavours such as roast­ed gar­lic, plan­tain, and moringa mint.

“I have a cus­tomer who calls me a mad sci­en­tist,” Gray-Lewis told Guardian Me­dia with a chuck­le.

But Gray-Lewis’ ice cream flavours have not al­ways been this ad­ven­tur­ous.

Her jour­ney with ice cream be­gan some six years ago af­ter a trip to a beach in Moru­ga.

“We were head­ing to the beach in Moru­ga and on the way there I said I was feel­ing for ice cream and there is a la­dy in Moru­ga who sells ice cream from her home so we passed the place and said when we are com­ing back we will buy the ice cream from that la­dy and when we did come back on the way back home we joined the line of wait­ing cars,” Gray-Lewis said.

“When it was our turn the woman told me that all the ice cream fin­ished so I made a joke and said ‘like ice cream has mon­ey in it, so I said I feel I will go and make ice cream and sell from home’ and that is how it start­ed,” she said.

Gray-Lewis said she start­ed with the help of her moth­er.

“I start­ed safe­ly and I did like co­conut ice cream be­cause as a child grow­ing up my moth­er used to make cus­tard ice cream and co­conut ice cream for us all the time,” Gray-Lewis said.

“As a mat­ter of fact the first batch of ice cream I didn’t even make it I asked my mom to come over and show me what to do to make ice cream be­cause I did not know any­thing about mak­ing ice cream and she did,” she said.

Gray-Lewis said that first week­end she let friends and fam­i­ly know she was mak­ing ice cream for sale and at the end of the day it was all was sold out.

This be­came a cat­a­lyst for her.

“I de­cid­ed I am go­ing to buy some recipe books and tried do­ing oth­er flavours be­side co­conut. I start­ed search­ing on­line for some recipes and I al­so start­ed search­ing for some new books and I bought them and that is how I start­ed try­ing some of the fan­cy flavours,” Gray-Lewis said.

“And even in terms of fan­cy the first set of flavours were kind of safe like peach­es and cream, I tried lime as well in the be­gin­ning too, bar­ba­dine, the ones that were not so dif­fi­cult to cre­ate,” she said.

The wheels kept churn­ing.

“Over time I kept try­ing more and more stuff and I kept look­ing for more recipes and I came across a recipe for cur­ry ice cream so I said I need­ed to try it but of course tweak it to suit me and I did try it,” Gray-Lewis said.

This was about three years ago.

“Cur­ry does not make you sick, when you make cur­ry crab it is milk and cur­ry so that is how I start­ed do­ing the cur­ry ice cream,” she said.

Gray-Lewis laud­ed God as her in­spi­ra­tion for her flavours.

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“I think God in­spires me be­cause some­times I just think about some­thing like for ex­am­ple one day it just hit me maybe mam­my ap­ple will taste good blend­ed with milk be­cause when you look at the tex­ture of the fruit and I made a punch out it and when I tast­ed it I said def­i­nite­ly I have to make this in­to an ice cream,” she said.

Like most oth­er busi­ness­es, Gray-Lewis said Ice Cream Chef was al­so af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the re­stric­tions put in place to stop its spread.

“COVID-19 af­fect­ed me both pos­i­tive­ly and neg­a­tive­ly,” she said.

“Where I was rent­ing my re­tail space the land­lord ex­pect­ed to me to pay full rent for the pe­ri­od that the gov­ern­ment shut down all food places and I de­cid­ed that I am not do­ing that and I closed down the re­tail space,” Gray-Lewis said.

But as one door closed an­oth­er opened.

“It im­pact­ed me pos­i­tive­ly from the per­spec­tive where as a re­sult of me hav­ing to close down I had to come up with a new way to do busi­ness so from that we start­ed do­ing the de­liv­ery ser­vice and since I have done that I have seen sales in­creas­ing by mak­ing the ice cream mo­bile to the cus­tomers and sell­ing to ar­eas in Trinidad where I was not be­fore,” Gray-Lewis said

“So be­fore it was strict­ly south and Princes Town side but now every Fri­day I go to cen­tral and we al­so have Es­ther James who does the dis­tri­b­u­tion for me along the east-west cor­ri­dor so my cus­tomer base has ac­tu­al­ly in­creased,” Gray-Lewis said.

Gray-Lewis said James has helped her tremen­dous­ly.

So what strange new flavour can cus­tomers ex­pect soon?

Well af­ter a chal­lenge from a male cus­tomer that they were not mak­ing enough flavours suit­ed specif­i­cal­ly for men, Gray-Lewis said she will be un­veil­ing a new flavour next week; bois bande ice cream.

Bois bande is the bark of the tree richeria gran­dis and has a rep­u­ta­tion in the Caribbean as an aphro­disi­ac.

Gray-Lewis said her ul­ti­mate goal is to start ex­port­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

While Gray-Lewis said she is known for her un­usu­al com­bi­na­tions she had ad­vice for young peo­ple which she said she hopes will help them to ex­cel in life.

“You have to mar­ry pas­sion with skill. And do not give up on your God-giv­en dream,” she said.