Lauren Hafeman
A man in a bright pink room holds a long stick that's placing a skoop of ice cream into a waffle cone.
Erkan Gozal opened Nar Turkish Ice Cream and Waffle four months ago.
Inside the Nar Turkish Halal restaurant in a strip mall on Fordem Avenue, Erkan Gozal has found a worldwide audience. His online shtick? Making videos of himself tricking customers with his homemade Turkish ice cream.
Gozal posts under the username @icetrickman1 on Instagram and TikTok. Combined, his accounts have more than 41,000 followers. Most of his posts have tens of thousands of views, though some count millions. His most popular video, posted on Instagram on July 23, has over 35 million views and nearly 45,000 comments.
Gozal opened Nar Turkish Ice Cream and Waffle four months ago inside Nar Turkish Halal’s main restaurant space. He serves homemade Maraş dondurması, known colloquially as “Turkish ice cream,” and fragrant homemade waffle cones.
A signature of serving Maraş dondurması is trickery and showmanship, a tradition that hails from traditional Turkish street vendors. Gozal, who grew up in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey, is a master of the “ice cream show.” He video records as he flips and stretches his ice cream with flair, raises it dangerously high on the end of a long scooping staff and teases customers as they go to grab for their cone by sweeping it away and spinning it around. Sometimes, he playfully pokes his customers with the bottom of the cone, or pulls the ice cream back with his scooping staff, leaving them with just the cone in their hand.
“I love showing [people] that my ice cream is more than just ice cream,” says Gozal. “It creates unforgettable, fun and memorable experiences.”
Maraş dondurması is not like American-made ice cream. It is made with milk and salep, a powder produced from wild orchid tubers. No artificial sweeteners are added, giving Maraş dondurması a deep milky flavor. The salep provides a stretchy texture and makes the ice cream resistant to melting, which makes Gozal’s parlor tricks possible. A sign next to Gozal’s intricately decorated freezer cart also touts the benefits of salep, saying that it may improve gut health, boost the immune system and provide natural antioxidants. This, says Gozal, makes Maraş dondurması a healthy dessert choice.
Traditional Maraş dondurması doesn’t include flavor add-ins and is made with pure goat's milk. But Gozal strays from tradition, using half goat’s milk and half cow’s milk “because many people aren’t accustomed to the sour flavor of goat’s milk.” He also offers a variety of flavors, including chocolate, Oreo and a strawberry-chocolate mix.
Gozal’s hometown, Kahramanmaraş, is famous across Turkey for its signature ice cream. The “Maraş” in “Maraş dondurması” is a shortened spelling of Kahramanmaraş, where the treat was first created.
“I grew up in a place where ice cream is the most popular and of the highest quality,” says Gozal. “I guess that’s why I have always been interested in ice cream.”
Gozal’s tricks often elicit big smiles from adults and children alike, adding entertainment value to his online videos. Audiences seem to enjoy watching other people get mischievously punked – one commenter says, “I love this video. The genuine laughter you gave them is so sweet, we need more of that.”
This year, during March Madness, Gozal was invited to showcase his masterful tricks on a nationally broadcast segment of CBS Sports. There, he taunted legendary basketball player Charles Barkley with a cone of “Marchmellow” ice cream. Though “Marchmellow” was not Maraş dondurması, as it was created as a part of Capital One’s “Ice Kareem” ad campaign with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Gozal’s teasing of Barkley went viral. Videos of the segment have been shared across platforms such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts by accounts with millions of followers, including the official handles of Bleacher Report and March Madness.
“My excitement grew when I got there because the studio was full of basketball stars and legends,” says Gozal, who runs a loop of the clip with Barkley on a television above his cart in the restaurant. “Performing the ice cream show for them, making them laugh, and having the chance to meet them was a proud moment for me.”
Editor's note: This article was updated to correct a typo in Gozal's last name.
