Before ice cream came in neat scoops, elaborate cones and cups with spoons that inevitably disappeared into the bin, there was the slice.

For generations of Maltese children, this was simply how you ate ice cream. It came from a van or kiosk as a solid block, cut into a generous slice, tucked between two thin wafers and wrapped in a piece of paper. No toppings. No drizzle. No decisions. Just ice cream, wafer and the urgent need to eat it before Malta’s summer heat turned it into something resembling soup.

The ice cream slice may have quietly disappeared as cones and tubs took over, but it has never quite left the collective memory. Mention it to anyone who remembers chasing the ice cream van and you will probably get the same reaction: “I remember those”.

There was something wonderfully straightforward about it. You held it in your hand, usually a little too carefully, while the wafer softened and the ice cream began its inevitable journey down your fingers. It was messy, slightly impractical and, somehow, perfect.

Now, in its twentieth year, Maltese gelato brand Sottozero is bringing the format back as from Wednesday 2 September. The idea is simple: two flavours layered together, pressed between two wafers and served as a slice, just as the old-fashioned format demands. And perhaps that is exactly why it works. At a time when everything seems to be getting bigger, fancier and more complicated, there is something refreshing about an ice cream that asks nothing of you beyond eating it.

Christian Mercieca, General Manager at  Sottozero tells Oh My Malta:

“Almost everyone in Malta over a certain age has a memory of this. The van, the paper, the race to finish it before it melted down your arm. It is one of those things that vanished without anyone deciding to get rid of it. We make gelato for a living, so it felt wrong to leave it gone. We are a Maltese company that learned to make gelato the Italian way, and twenty years in, this is the most Maltese thing we have ever put our name on. What we have put back is the same idea, made with our own gelato and made properly.”

Some foods are remembered for how they taste. Others are remembered for where you were when you ate them. The ice cream slice belongs firmly in the second category: a little piece of summer, wrapped in paper, that many Maltese will recognise from childhood.

Bringing it back is less about recreating the past than giving an old favourite another turn in the spotlight. The wafers are still there, the two layers of ice cream are still there, and the basic pleasure remains exactly the same.

Sometimes, you don’t need to improve a good memory. You just need to bring it back.