Set your stopwatch: ice cream burgers exist and are teaching us that with great taste innovation sometimes comes great impracticality.

IYO’s brand new ice cream burgers. Photo by Lindsay September.

There are restaurants that offer a seemingly simple challenge: eat a particularly hunky piece of meat in a certain time frame and you get your meal free. Inside and You’re Out (IYO)’s brand new ice cream burgers turn that concept on its head – take any longer than ten minutes and there will be no meal left to speak of.

Interior of Inside & You’re Out. Photo courtesy of the restaurant.

Start by selecting a combination of a cookie and an ice cream flavour. The cookie options are marshmallow, 70% dark chocolate chip, and one filled with hundreds and thousands. The ice cream is homemade and flavours include peanut, chocolate, chocolate chilli and cream cheese.

We can recommend the marshmallow cookie with the chocolate chilli ice cream. The cookie is not unlike a soetkoekie on (marshmallow) steroids, with a chewy texture that makes cutting or biting through it a breeze. The chocolate chilli ice cream is delicious; refreshing on the palate before giving you a friendly, if solid, kick in the throat, upon swallowing.

The marshmallow cookie with chocolate chilli ice cream. Photo by Lindsay September.

The crispier cookies such as the choc chip one are less accomodating. They’re impervious to cutting and almost as intolerant to being picked up and eaten like a normal burger. Generally choc chip cookie lovers are divided by their preference – gooey and chewy versus solid crispy cookies. IYO caters to the latter group, with a multitude of solid little nuggets of dark chocolate throughout.

Once you solve the oozing-out-the-sides dilemma, you’re on a clock, as patties of course have one thing on ice cream: they don’t usually melt away. Fortunately these burgers are tasty enough so that finishing them within a handful of minutes isn’t too big of an ask.

The dark chocolate chip cookie with cream cheese ice cream. Photo by Lindsay September.

All in all, the possible mess is worth giving it a try, especially if you’re careful with your flavour combination. A single choice is necessary, though – their name is no accident. These ice cream burgers are almost as filling as their savoury counterpart and will more than satisfy your sugar craving. We recommend gathering your friends so you can try all possible flavour combinations, and to do so quickly, before IYO’s chef introduces even more choices!

Be sure to ask for them – since IYO only began serving them last week, they aren’t on the menu just yet. Yours for R40.