A new ice-cream cabinet in Melbourne is testing the limits of the theory that we eat with our eyes. It contains six different flavours of ice-cream, all of them a shade of grey. None is labelled, and no taste tests are offered. The only way to choose is based on colour.

Grey isn’t a hue that’s usually desirable in food. Grey steak is tough and leathery. Hard-boiled eggs with a grey yolk are well past cooked. Discoloured patches on fruit show it’s beginning to spoil.

But this mystery ice-cream, part of an artwork called Greyscale at the annual M Pavilion design festival, is attracting queues and selling out.

Good Food visited the stand to find out what happens when you’re forced to eat with your eyes, but your eyes are tricking you. Does mortar-coloured ice-cream taste like cement? Can the unmistakable flavours of chocolate or banana, for example, push through?

The cart is set up in a corner of this year’s M Pavilion, a temporary concrete structure designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando that’s been sitting in Queen Victoria Gardens, opposite the Arts Centre, in the city since November.

Once you reach the front of the line, you see six tubs of gelato in various shades of grey, ranging from nearly black to dirty white. You can tell the servers if you have any allergies or dislikes, but otherwise, you have to take a punt.

The flavours are a closely guarded secret so that people can fully appreciate the blind-tasting experience.

Eating the gelato, it takes a few seconds for your brain to catch up with what you’re tasting versus what you think you’re going to taste. Some flavours are easy to identify, others take a minute or so to guess. Still, this food writer was reassured by being able to pick five out of six correctly.

The strangest flavour to eat was the darkest colour. It looked as if it would taste very dense and rich and yet, on my tongue, it was light, tangy, zippy. Huh?

That shade is also the most popular, but most people choose two ($8.50) or three scoops ($10.50) as a way of hedging their bets. Still, they’re surprisingly willing to surrender to the sensory deprivation experiment that Brazilian artist João Loureiro has created.

Tadao’s minimalist concrete structure for M Pavilion was the motivation for bringing Loureiro’s artwork to Melbourne.

“We wanted something a bit playful that would connect with the architecture,” says M Pavilion associate producer Paul Duboc.

Greyscale (or Escala de Cinzas) was first shown in the Argentine town San Carlos de Bariloche following a 2011 volcano eruption that blanketed the town in ash and crushed its tourism industry. Photographs from that time show a city stripped of colour. Loureiro’s grey-toned ice-cream, sold on the main street, fitted right in.

“It completely plays tricks on your mind,” says Sandra Foti, of Piccolina Gelateria, which created the ice-cream in Melbourne.

Loureiro gave specific instructions on everything from the colour of the ice-cream to the cups, spoons and cone holders, which must be white, grey or black.

“The dullness of the [artwork] is important. He wants it to look not too appealing,” says Duboc. “It’s playing with your senses and what you think is beautiful or good.”

Creating grey ice-cream that still tastes great wasn’t easy. The team at Piccolina, which has seven stores across Melbourne, produced at least 90 batches of gelato to come up with the final six flavours.

“We have never done so many trials on gelato,” says Foti.

The challenge was figuring out how activated charcoal, an almost flavourless edible ingredient that creates the grey colour, would react with the natural ingredients of each ice-cream. Over six weeks of trial and error, they even had to source pharmaceutical scales, which could measure tiny volumes.

“It was literally down to the gram or half a gram in terms of variation in the colour,” says Foti.

Part of the artist’s instructions were that each shade had to have a specified percentage of grey in it, with each shade 20 per cent darker than the one before.

But Foti didn’t think twice about being involved. “You understand straight away what the artist is trying to achieve [with the work], you get it… which is rare,” she says.

“Seeing people’s faces as they’re trying to understand what the flavour is, is actually so fun.”

Greyscale is at M Pavilion (Queen Victoria Gardens, St Kilda Road, Melbourne) on February 14 (2pm-7pm), February 15 (2pm-5pm) and February 16 (2pm-7pm), then March 16 & 17 (11am-6pm), mpavilion.org

Five ice-cream shops doing creative collaborations

Kariton Sorbetes

This Filipino ice-cream shop has teamed up with other Asian-owned businesses around town, such as Enter Via Laundry, to make limited-edition desserts as part of its Crazy Hard Working Asians series. Other one-off projects have included a tres leches cake with gelato based on the Mexican rice-based drink horchata for taco shop CDMX and, coming up, two nights of cocktails paired with gelato in cahoots with Southbank distillery Patient Wolf (February 28-29).

Locations in Glen Waverley, Footscray and Melbourne CBD, karitonsorbetes.com

Pidapipo

Many chefs have teamed up with Pidapipo on special flavours or ice-cream cakes over the years, including Natalie Paull of Beatrix Bakes, who made a 10th birthday cake for the gelateria in December. For the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, Sydney chef Dan Hong will be at Pidapipo’s Fitzroy HQ on March 16, serving one-off sweet-and-savoury treats showcasing Asian ingredients and flavours.

Locations in Carlton, Fitzroy, Windsor and Melbourne CBD, pidapipo.com

Kori

Black Star Pastry, Tarts Anon, Drom Bakery: if it’s sweet in Melbourne, Kori founder Joane Yeoh has probably worked it into her Japanese-inspired ice-cream range. Her collaborations are frequent and thrilling, and have even included chefs taking over the shop for the night serving savoury items while Yeoh creates an on-theme dessert. Keep an eye on social media for what’s next.

Locations in Hawthorn and Melbourne CBD, kori-icecream.com.au

Piccolina

No stranger to collaborations, Piccolinahas put its menu in the hands of chefs for annual takeovers since 2021. Chefs such as Hugh Allen (Vue de Monde), Thi Le (Anchovy) and Nornie Bero (Mabu Mabu) have created flavours including Davidson plum with white chocolate, and toasted jasmine rice with banana. For Lunar New Year, Carlton restaurant Lagoon Dining has created six special flavours, including mango sorbet with lychee jelly.

Available until February 27 at seven locations around Melbourne, piccolinagelateria.com.au

Lune Croissanterie

What’s a croissant shop doing messing with ice-cream, you ask? When the results are this spectacular, it doesn’t matter. For a limited time, get what has to be the mother of all ice-cream sandwiches: a pain au chocolat from cult croissanterie Lune split and filled with two scoops of croissant ice-cream. The ice-cream has a croissant-flavoured base and is studded with chunks of caramelised croissant. Hurry.

Available February 10-28 at 835 High Street, Armadale, and 15 Manning Street, South Brisbane, lunecroissanterie.com