1000s
Booza is born
Somewhere in Al-Sham, someone pounds milk, mastic and sahlab in a chilled drum until it turns elastic. Nine centuries later the recipe has not changed, because nobody has found a better one.
We cherish
our heritage
Booza has been made the same way across Al-Sham since the 11th century: pounded by hand until it stretches. Hop in the van. First stop, a thousand years back.
Let's goThe timeline
1990s
A back room in Saida
Haytham Al Rimlawi is handed the pestle before his arms are long enough for it, standing next to someone older. No recipe is written down. You learn the sound the drum makes when the booza is ready, and you learn it by being wrong for a few years first.
2014
Rimlawi begins
He starts making booza under his own name. Same drum, same mastic, same arm. The change is who it reaches: people who remember this taste from childhood and cannot find it any more.
Today
On a stick
Traditional booza is eaten where you stand, gone in ten minutes. Putting it on a stick is the one modern decision we made. A memory you can hand to somebody, carry home, and keep in the freezer until the right afternoon.
Haytham Al Rimlawi
The man who
wouldn't buy a machine
There is a machine that will make something close to booza in a fraction of the time. Haytham has been shown it more than once.
A churn whips air in. The pestle forces air out. That is the whole difference between airy modern ice cream and booza dense enough to chew.
“It still demands the exact same ingredients, time, and dedication it always has. That is how my master taught me, and how his master taught him.”
Three things,
and a lot of arm
Miskeh
Mastic resin
Tapped from the mastic tree and ground to a powder. It is what gives booza its pull, and a faint pine-and-citrus note you will not find in ice cream made anywhere else.
Sahlab
Wild orchid root
The thickener that lets booza hold together without eggs and without cream loaded to breaking point. It is the reason the texture is chewy rather than soft.
The mihbaj
A wooden pestle, and an arm
Not churned. Pounded, in a chilled drum, by hand, until the mixture turns elastic and starts to fight back. It is the slowest way to make ice cream and the only one that makes this.
You already know what this tastes like
That is rather the point. Boxes of 24, whichever flavors you want, delivered across Greater Beirut.