Ice cream is undoubtedly one of the favorite frozen desserts – a perfect dessert for a hot summer afternoon and a great go-to comfort food. In fact, TasteAtlas recently listed ice cream as among the most popular frozen desserts in the world.

Its versatility with endless variations and flavors offers every ice cream lover endless options to satisfy their cravings and confuse their taste buds.

From simple and classic flavors such as chocolate and vanilla, tropical flavors like mango and passion fruit, to the most complex and exotic flavors such as the Squid ink ice cream in South Korea and the bizarre crocodile ice cream in Davao City.

“Apparently, there are 13 kinds (eggs experimented), but mostly birds. But there was one, crocodile, so I told my dad, he said we have a lot of infertile eggs. So ‘yun (that was it) we experimented, and the outcome was edible, masarap naman (it's delicious),” she explained.

To have variations of crocodile ice cream in terms of flavors, she then further experimented incorporating local fruits, chocolate, among others, and came up with their three signature crocodile ice cream flavors – durian, chocolate, and coffee, all are sourced locally.

However, the fascination did not stop there; She experimented by adding small bits of crocodile meat to the ice cream.

“There’s another flavor where we put crocodile meat by bits, bits of crocodile meat. We add like pandan baka malangsahan sila (We add pandan as flavor because people might smell or taste stale or fishy),” she explained.

At present, all of their crocodile ice cream flavors, including the pandan-flavored crocodile ice cream with crocodile meat bits, are constantly their best-sellers.

She noted, “Curious talaga yung mga visitors dito because maybe they’ve heard about it, they’ve seen it on YouTube. 

(The visitors here are really curious because maybe they've heard about it, they've seen it on YouTube). They look for this, and so far, wala talagang bad reaction (so far there is no bad reaction at all).”

Dizon clarified that the process of making crocodile ice cream is just the same as how regular ice creams are made.

As to health benefits, Dizon affirmed that “crocodile meat is one of the healthiest meats that we can eat because crocodile is all lean, they have very little fat and high in protein.”

She said that crocodile eggs are healthy alternatives, as they are high in lecithin, a naturally occurring fat that helps lower high blood pressure, can improve cholesterol levels, and may reduce your overall risk for heart disease.

At the Davao Crocodile Park & Zoo, where they obtain crocodile eggs from both saltwater and freshwater crocodiles, Dizon mentioned that they conduct a manual examination of all crocodile eggs to distinguish between fertile and infertile ones. Furthermore, Dizon revealed that they adhere to specific guidelines regarding when and how many crocodiles to butcher for their meat.

“Meron kailangan talaga. hindi pwede yung ganito lang size sa crocodile i-katay, hindi pwede dapat may certain age and length (They are really necessary. It is not possible to butcher this size of crocodile, it must be according to a certain age and length),” she pointed out the importance of establishing their own guidelines on slaughtering crocodiles.

Indeed, a visit to Davao City would be incomplete and less memorable without checking off one of the must-try experiences in the city - indulging in crocodile ice cream. (ASO/PIA-XI)