It’s the “kid’s jury” portion of the two-day DC Gelato Festival and children have been plucked from the crowd to judge this year’s 12 competing flavors. They’re about to embark on their 11th cup of gelato in 30 minutes: a frozen riff on pistachio baklava from Bluenoon, a local vendor operating out of the Union Kitchen incubator. One of the jurors—quite clearly in the throes of a powerful sugar high—enthusiastically hands down his rating of Bluenoon’s dessert: an unlawful score of 1,100,011 out of the maximum 15 points.
Bluenoon owners Hiba Akhtar and Hiba Jaafari specialize in flavors that are inspired by the duo’s Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern roots (disclosure: Akhtar and Jaafari participated in a panel I organized this summer on local women working in ice cream). Jafaari is Syrian-American by way of Columbia, Mo., and it was her memories of traveling to Damascus and sampling its pistachio-flecked desserts that inspired Bluenoon’s Gelato Festival entry. Their pistachio baklava gelato starts with a creamy pistachio base that’s studded with walnuts and infused with dark honey, cinnamon, and clove. Diamond-shaped pieces of her mother’s baklava are nestled on top of each 5-liter pan, and each scoop is finished off with a few spritzes of orange blossom simple syrup and a shower of toasted phyllo dough flakes.
Aside from a few smaller demos around Union Kitchen and an Iftar catering gig at Georgetown’s The Wing, the gelato festival was Bluenoon’s first large-scale production event. Alongside a mango-raspberry-cashew entry from Michigan’s Iorio Gelato, the Bluenoon team took home “The Gela-to-go Award” for most pints sold during the festival. “We have felt such a genuine interest in and support of what we’re doing,” says Akhtar.
When Bluenoon finally launches its pints in the District’s Union Kitchen grocery stores at the end of October, the pistachio baklava will be one of their four inaugural flavors. For now, Bluenoon is accepting individual pickup orders and will be sampling their flavors at Union Kitchen groceries and select MOM’s grocery stores.
Akhtar is Pakistani-American and grew up in Germantown, Md. Bluenoon’s yogurt-based mango lassi gelato, another of their launch flavors, is her ode to Pakistan’s sweltering summers. “My family is from Karachi, where the electricity goes out a million times a day, and one of the things that people do [to stay cool] is make lassi,” says Akhtar. “It was so strongly tied to that memory that recreating it felt really important.”
The Hibas first met in 2015 through mutual friends, but it wasn’t until 2018 that their kernel-sized idea for a gelato company evolved into Bluenoon. They registered for a two week-long course at Carpigiani Gelato University in Chicago, where they began the slow process of transforming their childhood flavors into frozen desserts. “Hiba [J.] wanted to make a booza flavor and our teachers were like, ‘Go to the Arab store, get the mastic gum, get the salep powder, and let’s recreate it,’” says Akhtar.
Booza, an elastic ice cream popular in Arab countries, gets its stretch from gummy tree resin and pulverized wild orchid tubers. After an initial run of chocolate, vanilla, pistachio baklava, and mango lassi gelatos, the Hibas hope to release their updated riff on booza.
“There’s a lot of trial and error when it comes to certain flavors. We tried a gulab jamun flavor and it didn’t really translate to gulab jamun,” says Jafaari, describing a Pakistani dessert made from milk solids, cardamom, and rose. “Our friends devoured it, but we weren’t happy with the texture.” (It’s still a work in progress, as is a forthcoming Syrian-inspired tamarind-rose water sorbet.)
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For Ramadan, Bluenoon released a limited edition Syrian lemonade sorbetto as a nod to the mint-infused limonada beloved across the Middle East. “Attaching that word ‘Syrian’ to something that’s not devastating or evoking sadness or trauma is a good way to rewrite that story,” says Akhtar. “At the end of the day, food is political.”
While politicizing food to upend stale narratives has been an overarching mission for Bluenoon, it hasn’t always worked out in their favor. They accepted payment for pints of the Syrian lemonade sorbetto over Venmo—priced at $8 each—but Bluenoon’s owners say the payment platform initially blocked any payments including the word “Syrian” in the description. Venmo and other payment sites like PayPal have reportedly been rejecting transactions that they believe to be violating the federal government’s sanctions against Syria.
It’s not the first time U.S. policy has interfered with their business, either. The owners say President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports significantly increased the cost of their packaging, which they source from a Chinese manufacturer. Their launch, originally planned for early summer, was delayed by months as they waited for shipments of empty pint containers to arrive. “When you’re a tiny little start-up, every dollar counts,” says Akhtar. “We did end up having to pay double what we were expecting because of the Trump tariffs.”
“A lot of these small businesses unfortunately were hit,” says Jafaari, commenting on the burgeoning companies operating out of the Union Kitchen culinary incubator. Adds Akhtar: “It would have been way more affordable just a year ago.”
Despite the wait, they remain optimistic about their impending launch. “You get to make people happy,” with ice cream, says Akhtar. “And you get to tell a story in the process.”
