The local scoop on ice cream is that the most Instagram-worthy novelty since the maple bacon donut is now on a roll in a discreet corner of the Big Lots shopping center in Lansdale?

Not familiar with rolled ice cream?

Just ask any teen or college-age connoisseur of all that is urban and trendy, writes Gary Puleo in The Times Herald.

Like his peers, 21-year-old Eric Kim was wise to the proliferation of gourmet Asian dessert shops in Philadelphia’s Chinatown and other cities and was convinced his hometown area was ready for its own purveyor of rolled ice cream confections, bubble tea and milk snow — and he would gladly step up as the one to provide them, with his first foray into restaurant ownership, Cafe Cabana.

Now the Instagram-intensive crowd of largely middle and high school students are his target audience and most loyal customers.

“I really liked the idea of bringing trendy desserts to a suburban area. All of these desserts that you’ll see here are very common and trending now in any cosmopolitan area,” noted Kim, slipping into a booth at the recently opened Café Cabana.

With its tangerine-colored walls and zig-zag patterned seats, the vibe here is effervescent and inviting, precisely the sort of ambience Kim, who grew up in North Wales, was seeking when he and his partner Paul Cho, a friend of Kim’s father’s, decided to turn a former bakery into an intimate cafe.

“I’m pretty sure we’re the first place like this in the area, and we try to keep the quality as high as we can,” said the North Penn High School graduate. “My family and I went to Chinatown and my sister wanted to try this dessert and that dessert, so I just got the idea, why not bring all these things to one place in the suburbs?”

Rolled ice cream is just what you’d expect by the name — small rolls of made-to-order, surprisingly thin rolls of either vanilla or chocolate ice cream that are arranged into a cup according to the desired delight: Strawberry Shortcake, Berry Berries, BanaTella, S’mores, MangoNana, Coffee Time, Green Tea Melody and Ore Oreo, the most popular.

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