Film

A quick question for experienced cinema-goers. Häagen-Dazs has a new, larger variety of ice cream tub available to buy in cinemas called the "nouveau format" – or should that be "nöuveau"? I tried one last night, but it’s nearly impossible to eat from it.

It comes to you frozen into an ice block and you have a tiny plastic slat – I hesitate to call it a spoon – to eat the ice block with. You start scraping away in the dark with what you hope is the ‘eating’ end of the slat, although you can only tell for sure if you read Braille, until eventually you have enough, you think, for a minor mouthful. 

Then you try to find your lump of ice cream, which has rebonded with the motherload. If it’s chocolate-flavoured, good luck finding it in the dark. But if you do find it and stick your slat in to eat it, it turns out the ice cream has a tiny ejector seat fitted to it that propels it up into the air.

Am I correct in thinking that you have to wait until the ice block has defrosted sufficiently that you can use the slat properly to scoop up the ice cream and have it go all over the sides and your fingers? Or is there a better way?