“I don’t think there’s anything like this in Bristol – it is unique”
It has been the talk of South Bristol all summer. The hippies had their Summer of Love in 1967, then there was the ‘Hot Girl Summer’ of 2019, before Charli XCX declared 2024 to be a ‘Brat Summer’. But for people in Knowle West, Knowle, Victoria Park and Bedminster, 2025 will be the Ice Cream Summer.
And not just any old ice cream, from any old shop. At the start of the summer, the owners of the Nisa branded convenience store on Glyn Vale created what could be Bristol’s, or even Britain’s, first and only ice cream parlour inside a regular supermarket.
The shop opened as a Nisa store last year and quickly gained a reputation as somewhere where you could get the kind of snacks, sweets and drinks from all around the world that you couldn’t get anywhere else, but a couple of months ago, owner Akash Patel had a lightbulb moment – he was going to create a unique ice cream experience the likes of which Bristol has never seen before.
Since then, the Nisa ice cream parlour has been the buzz around South Bristol. It’s located halfway up the hill between Bedminster and Knowle West, close to Knowle, Totterdown, Windmill Hill and Victoria Park. And they have been coming from all corners to see and experience the ice cream extravaganza that everyone has been talking about.
In the same way that the arrival in a location of local legend Sav’s ice cream van – with his impossibly large trays of ice cream – causes a storm on the local social media, the Glyn Vale Ice Cream Corner has created a similar buzz.
It’s not just that the ice cream itself is actually really nice – not the usual airy whipped style, this is proper creamy, thick and substantial ice cream. It’s also even more that the possibilities are literally endless. From the suggested menu alone, there are more than 16,000 different ice cream combinations you could have.
The Nisa Glyn Vale Ice Cream Corner, run by store owners Akash and Nic, with ice cream queen Teri Jackson(Image: Bristol Post)
You could have a different ice cream combination of toppings, cones, cups, trays, sauces and sprinkles every day for 44 years and not have the same thing twice.
But that’s only if you stick to the menu. The thing that makes the Glyn Vale ice cream experience unlike anything else is that you can have any kind of actual ice cream you want. Most people would, perhaps, go for an orange Twirl or a Twix, and the ice cream queen Teri Jackson will get out the blender and create a genuine orange Twirl ice cream.
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It doesn’t even have to be a chocolate bar – if it’s edible and they sell it in the shop, Teri will turn it into ice cream. No one has asked for a prawn cocktail Monster Munch ice cream yet, but Teri said the oddest thing she’s been asked to create so far was an avocado and banana ice cream.
The shop stocks fruit, veg, crisps, snacks, bread, sweets and chocolate – thousands of lines. It’s hard to calculate accurately, but it’s likely that you could walk into Nisa Glyn Vale and have the choice of more than ten million different ice creams, combining anything in the shop with the variety already in the corner.
“I was just sitting behind the counter one day when it was quiet, looking at that corner,” said Akash. “I wanted to do something that would get people talking, bring them into the shop and the summer was coming, so it came to me in one go.
The Nisa Glyn Vale Ice Cream Corner, run by store owners Akash and Nic, with ice cream queen Teri Jackson(Image: Bristol Post)
“I sketched out what I wanted it to look like on my phone, got people in to create it, and then I did loads of research on YouTube and the internet about what the best things were. So I got the machine, and away we went,” he added.
Teri is the main creator of the ice cream, and most hot days this summer there has been a queue out of the door, especially in the afternoons and evenings.
“I don’t think there’s anything like this in Bristol – it is unique,” said the shop’s co-owner Nik. “It’s funny because one of our regular customers is from Ireland and when they saw it they were telling their partner that this is common in Ireland – every local shop has an ice cream counter. But this is a bit different, it’s not just an ice cream freezer with a few tubs in, it’s an endless opportunity to create whatever ice cream you want,” he added.