The parlour is at 366 George St. N., located roughly at the former Tango clothing boutique. The business’s ice cream mostly comes from Central Smith Creamery with some from Kawartha Dairy.
The Chill Desire sells traditional ice cream in cones or cups, sundaes, smoothies and milkshakes. A unique selling point of the parlour for Peterborough is that they offer waffle varieties such as Belgian and bubble to go with their ice cream. They also do ice cream on their waffles, ‘waff-wiches’ and ‘waff-sticks’ as variations.
“We wanted to bring some uniqueness nobody has so that's why we sell waffles with ice cream,” said Nitish, The Chill Desire co-owner.
The idea stemmed from Nitish visiting his home country of India which had his friends introduce him to waffles with ice cream during an outing.
“That was the first time I had a waffle with ice cream and I loved it, explained Nitish. “The idea just stuck in my mind so when we decided to do ice cream, the flashback of the memory just got there. It was so great that I had to bring that here.”
The brothers add extra uniqueness to their parlour by bringing their Indian heritage into some of their menu items. They offer falooda (a cold dessert with noodles made from mixing rose syrup, vermicelli, and sweet basil seeds with milk and often served with ice cream), kulfi (traditional Indian ice cream that’s typically denser and creamier), gulab jamun (Indian reduced milk solids soaked in syrup), badam milk (milk blended with almonds, saffron and cardamom) and a few Indian ice cream flavours. They include rajbhog (nut bonanza) and kesar pista (saffron pistachio).
Nitish and Juneja are Fleming graduates and came to Canada as international students from India. In addition to offering Downtown Peterborough a new food option, they opened the parlour to help combat the homesickness for the entire Indian community and introduce a new option for anyone unfamiliar with their heritage’s dessert.
“We came here four years ago, we couldn't find a specific place for Indian desserts,” explained Nitish. “We missed our home and missed that part. We felt that was the same for the Indian community we have here so we thought we could bring Indian dessert and fusion here.”
The Chill Desire’s operating hours are unlike any other ice cream parlour in town according to the brothers. They are open from 11 a.m. - 2 a.m. on Monday to Saturday and 11 a.m. - 11 p.m. on Sundays. Nitish says he wants to have another late-night food option available to Peterborough.
“Nobody in Peterborough is open until two as a dessert place so they can get freshly scooped ice cream,” he explained. “Usually, people order from a convenience store or the gas station; they sell the pre-packs but not freshly scooped so we're here to fulfill their late-night cravings.”
