Hattori Bokujou Ice cream Kobo Kasaringa

Gelato made from the milk of the cows outside

CASALINGA sits on Hattori Farm and turns the farm's own milk into ice cream, which is a short supply chain by any measure: the herd is in view from the rest area where you eat the cone. The workshop uses only milk from the farm's cows and adds as little as possible around it, choosing the other ingredients on the basis that they should not get in the way of the dairy. Everything is made by hand, one batch at a time, and the aim the workshop sets itself is modest and specific: a small everyday happiness, made from the farm's own milk.

Soft serve, Italian gelato and a counter with a view

The range is deliberately short. Italian gelato and soft serve are the two formats, with milk-based souvenirs for anyone who wants to take the farm home. The list is deliberately short and has stayed that way. The whole proposition is what happens when good milk is handled carefully and sold within sight of where it was produced, inside the farm's own visitor area rather than out on a road somewhere.

The shop is a sales counter with a rest space attached rather than a room to be seated in. You buy, then sit, then look at the pasture. It shares the farm's visitor area with a barbecue facility and a sausage workshop, and the staff are also the way in to the farm's hands-on activities, cow milking and butter making among them, which makes a stop here easy to extend into an afternoon.

Start with the soft serve

Order the soft serve before anything else. It is the format that puts the least between you and the milk, which is the entire point of the place, and it is the clearest thing to judge the farm's dairy on.

Then take a gelato for comparison. The same milk in a denser, colder, Italian style eats differently, and running the two side by side is the most informative half hour available here. If either is worth repeating, the milk-based souvenirs are the take-home version. It is a small operation with a narrow menu and an unusually direct connection between what is grazing outside the window and what ends up in the cup.