First things first: a 99 is a soft-serve ice cream cone with a Cadbury Flake stuck in it. That’s it. No gimmicks, no secret sauce, just vanilla soft serve and a chocolate stick that crumbles like a delicious disaster waiting to happen. (Side note: why does the Flake always fall off right when you’re about to take a bite? It’s a test of character, I swear.) The mystery, of course, is the name — and it has nothing to do with the price, the year, or some royal decree about a “99” shaped cone.
The most widely accepted story actually starts in Scotland in the 1920s. An Italian immigrant named Stefano Arcari opened a shop in Glasgow and sold ice cream with a wafer, but he wanted something special. He got a shipment of Flakes from Cadbury, which had just launched them in 1920, and decided to put it right in the middle of his cones. Why call it a 99? Because, according to his son, their shop at 99 Portobello High Street in Edinburgh was the birthplace. Boom. That’s the local legend, anyway. (But wait — there’s a twist, because history never gives us a clean answer, does it?)
The Competition: Italian Ice Cream Kings
Another theory comes from the Italian ice cream community in the UK. Many of those early gelato makers — the ones who brought soft serve to British beaches — were from a town called Portobello in Italy. And in Italian slang, “99” was supposedly the code for “emergency” or “the best” among vendors. (No, I’m not making this up — it’s like a secret handshake for gelato bosses.) Some historians even say that “99” referred to the price in old Italian lira: 99 centesimi, which was a nice, affordable number. But that doesn’t hold up because the Flake wasn’t part of that original Italian recipe.
Still, my favorite story — the one that keeps me up at night in a good way — is about King Edward VII. Apparently, he visited a shop in London and asked for an ice cream. The vendor handed him one with a Flake, and the king said, “Make it look like a 99!” — referring to the number on the door of a local club or something. This story is almost certainly total baloney, but I love it because it’s exactly the kind of nonsense people repeat at parties to sound smart. (You can use it, by the way. I won’t tell anyone you’re lying.)
Why is a 99 ice cream called a 99? | GoodtoKnow
