There's a café in Barcelona that has something to say about ice cream.

You've probably seen ice cream on your Instagram feed lately featuring Michelangelo's David, a vanilla duck melting in espresso, or a cookie ice cream with a Tarot card on it. These are the creations of Otsu, a trendy Barcelona café that's also making waves in the world of ice cream.

Otsu opened a couple of years ago in the Poblenou neighborhood of Barcelona, ​​a former industrial area transformed into a gentrified district. Its founder is Fer Villanueva, who worked for years in technology and marketing before turning to cooking. Otsu offers everything a modern café needs: specialty coffee from April, the renowned Danish roaster, matcha, pastries, Japanese-inspired cuisine, and reinvented local dishes. It's open from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. for breakfast or lunch.

We, who often talk about boldness and innovation in the world of ice cream, couldn't help but be intrigued. Otsu's ice cream is experimental in a way that's different from the norm: it's not an experiment in flavor; the main flavor is vanilla, with just a hint of strawberry and a white chocolate coating in the Summer David, the ice cream inspired by Michelangelo. The experimentation lies in the design and the sense of wonder it aims to create.

A concept that perfectly aligns with this café and its inspiration: design, marketing, and, of course, quality. The selection of baked goods, the Japanese-inspired cuisine, the specialty coffees, and the matcha are, apparently, impeccable; after all, Otsu in Japanese translates to "well done."

Combining artisanal skill with pleasing aesthetics? Is this the future of ice cream? Is it really so unthinkable?

What are Otsu ice creams like?

For example, there were five cookie ice creams inspired by Tarot cards, and in an interview with Traveller, the chef explained how the game she created for the service worked: instead of choosing their own flavor, each customer randomly received one of the five creations inspired by the five Major Arcana. The idea came from the ritual of the cards themselves, from that curiosity that drives you to choose a card at random to see which figure will appear. In the same interview, Fer explains how the idea came to her while flipping through a Taschen book: "The illustrations, the level of detail, and the beauty of each card made me want to flip through it again and again," Fer explains. She wanted to convey that same feeling in the food.

Other unusual ice creams include duck ice cream, inspired by the small clay ducks that Chinese children mold and place in the snow, and banana bread ice cream, served with a scoop of banana-shaped ice cream flavored with toasted butter.

All these inspirations come to Fer and her team during the Weekend Specials, a brilliant marketing idea. Every weekend, the staff chooses to explore a culinary technique they're not experts in: there was a focaccia weekend, a cotton candy weekend, and even an ice cream weekend. Café customers, curious to know what's new this week, flock to Otsu every Saturday and line up.