Falooda fables: A transcontinental tale

My first encounter with the popular dessert ended in heartbreak, but since then, I’ve pursued the tasty treat across the world in many forms

Once upon a time, a wide-eyed 7-year-old girl went to Chattogram to visit her uncle. The idea of the port stirred her dreams of pirates and high-seas adventures, so the reality of the city turned out to be a bit disappointing. That is, until, one day, she heard the tale of a true treasure.

“Do you want to have a falooda?” her uncle asked.

She was perplexed and intrigued by his fascinating description of the enigmatic dessert – an ice-cold symphony of milk, tapioca, ice cream, and jello. She could almost taste it in her mind’s eye as she imagined the tiny drops of condensation on the frosty glass. She waited impatiently for the next evening when it would finally be in her grasp.

Sadly, there was a tragic twist.

Her mother learned of her uncle’s plans and dashed them immediately.

“A freezing falooda in December? Impossible. That’s a sure way to catch a cold,” she sniffed.

Thus my first encounter with the enigmatic falooda came to an abrupt end.

Thankfully, there is a happy ending to the tale.

Fate finally led me to a fateful encounter with falooda at a party. I had taken a bowl of what I thought was some fancy shemaai, the milky vermicelli dish familiar from many family gatherings. It wasn’t until I had delightedly devoured half the bowl that I learned it was the fabled falooda.

It was everything I had dreamed of and then some, but one question remained – why was it served in a bowl when my uncle had painted such vivid images of a glass?

Well, as the years since have taught me, falooda is a versatile treat, whether served in a glass, a bowl, or even a 20-litre bucket. I have embraced it in all its many forms, from Star Kabab’s watery yogurt version, to Bar-B-Q Tonite’s indulgent ice-cream laden creation, and even my all-time favourite, the homemade jello-packed edition.

But it hasn’t stopped there. My exploration of the falooda has gone international.

In bustling Bangkok, I stumbled upon 7-11's dessert treasure trove, filled with little sealed cups brimming with colorful variations of falooda. These, I later discovered, were Thai desserts made with coconut milk. I sampled each hue—pink, green, and purple—but found myself repeatedly drawn to Lod Chong and Cendol. Lod Chong, with its soft pandan starch jelly noodles, melted in my mouth, while Cendol brought a satisfying snap from its rice flour jelly mixed with pandan essence. Both were drenched in coconut milk sweetened with palm sugar syrup—a blissful relief in the scorching Thai summer.

Then entered the Filipino favourite, halo-halo, a worthy contender to the Falooda crown. Halo-halo means ‘mixed’ in Tagalog and is a carnival of textures and flavors – cornflakes, red rubies, red bean, coconut strips, and preserved fruit slices, all taking a delightful plunge into a glass of ice-cold evaporated milk. While lacking the snappy noodles, it compensated with the luxurious addition of leche flan, or as we fondly call it in Bangladesh, ‘pudding’. Mamason's Dirty Ice-cream in London elevated the experience with a generous scoop of ice cream made from ube - a Filipino purple yam - that tastes almost exactly like a smooth paste of wafer biscuits.

Though Halo-Halo may not claim the top spot on my list of milky delights, I can’t help getting a hit of nostalgia every time I have it. After all, it is served in a glass, just like the falooda my uncle once promised in Chittagong.

That first encounter may have been disappointing, but I see the chronicle of my fascination with falooda extending far into the future, one that I hope is filled with twists, turns, and the delight of digging up a fresh new dessert treasure.

This article is part of Stripe, bdnews24.com's special publication focusing on culture and society from a youth perspective.