La Bombe
3020 H Street – Sacramento

Words by Adam Saake | Photos by Nicholas Wray

Veteran restaurateur Jennifer Dare Sparks, of the long-time Sacramento Spanish food establishment Aioli Bodega Espanola that’s been around nearly 20 years now, as well as the now defunct Habanero Cava Latina, Port Rouge and Barbarosa, has opened a new ice cream parlor in the heart of East Sacramento. On May 19, 2012 Dare Sparks and partner Bruce Strickley Jr. welcomed customers inside La Bombe, a small and attractively painted storefront in the McKinley Square shopping complex on the corner of H and Alhambra. Serving over twenty flavors of Gunther’s Ice Cream, espresso drinks and sandwiches, their real specialty is a unique frozen confection called bombes, or if you’re not into brevity, les bombe glacés.

Like Dare Sparks’ previous endeavors, bombes are borrowed from the European culinary experience. The typically French dessert is spherical and can be layered with ice cream, cake, waffle cone, fruit preserves or syrups. Besides the fact that they’re delicious, Dare Sparks didn’t have to travel across the ocean to make them just as you don’t have to to enjoy one.

“I’m interested in starting something that is unique to the American market by utilizing materials that we have locally like Gunther’s Ice Cream, and combining them and composing them into unique European items,” says Dare Sparks.

And she’s done just that. Her influence and points of reference come from when she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, Italy, in the early ‘80s and when she later married an Algerian chef (Aioli co-founder Reda Bellarbi), now her ex-husband and business partner. Dare Sparks spent time in Paris and Algiers and speaks four languages including French, Italian and Spanish. Her passion for European lifestyle and cuisine shows through on the specialty dessert menu that includes Affogatto, vanilla ice cream topped with espresso and candied orange peels or the Granitta di Café con Panna, an Italian iced coffee with sweetened espresso topped with whipped cream. But the dessert she says is most unique to the shop is the frozen hazelnut fudge in a cup and topped with whipped cream, Gianduia con Panna.

“I don’t know anybody, anywhere who’s doing that in the United States,” says Dare Sparks. “I’ve only had that in Italy.”

The bombes at first seem a little curious, but once you bite into one your sensory memory will remind you that it’s ice cream and other sweet goodies you’ve already had before and most likely already love. What is also attractive about these desserts is the portion size. It’s roughly equal to a scoop of ice cream and a cone, so you’re not trying to wolf down a giant dome of ice cream in once sitting. It’s just right. Some notable creations were The Colonial Bombe, a combination of coconut, chocolate and banana ice creams with chocolate cookie wafers, dusted with cocoa and topped with toasted coconut or The French Bomb, which has chocolate ice cream, black raspberry sorbet and vanilla ice cream layered with chocolate cookie wafers, raspberry jam with raspberry syrup. And as La Bombe gets all settled in, you can expect bombes du jour as well as rotating creations changing on the menu.

It’s July and it’s hot, and foot traffic and families spilling over from McKinley will surely keeping the ice cream scoops a-scoopin’, but La Bombe isn’t only serving up sweets. They’ve got a very focused sandwich menu that is killing with the cold cuts.

“I’m hoping to get the word out,” says Dare Sparks. “Between what the chefs are doing with the simplicity of adding herbs to mayonnaise and quick pickling the cucumber and then we have a great rep; Steve Campanelli at Tony’s Fine Foods.”

A great deli sandwich starts with two slices of quality bread, theirs being from Bella Bru. And then is closely followed by high quality meats; Tony’s Fine Foods has got it covered.

“I knew what I wanted. I wanted the purest flavors for our meats,” says Dare Sparks. “We’re trying to do something of a really high quality.”

Upon our visit we tried the Proscuiutto Cotto ham and Emmi Gruyere Swiss cheese sandwich on a baguette as well as the Deitz and Watson Rare London broil with white cheddar. Both were of exceptional quality–simple and delicious without being overcrowded or over complicated. It’s the perfect sandwich to pick up to go and hop across the street to watch the ducks in the park or pull up a chair at the bar that lines the bright front windows, perfect for people watching.

“We fell in love with this location and I said, ‘I’ve been working on this idea for five years.’ You know, when young people started saying, ‘It’s the bomb?’ And I like playing on words,” jokes Dare Sparks.

La Bombe is “the bomb” and it won’t take long before this place blows up.