I didn’t always identify as an ice cream connoisseur, but a few recent happenings have shown me just how much space ice cream occupies in my heart and mind. For one, I recently moved in with another ice cream enthusiast and some of our longest and most sincere discussions have been about which flavors at Jeni’s we think are the best. There was also the time a coworker pointed it out while we were on a work trip in LA — apparently, I had been planning our activities each day around their proximity to local scoop shops.1
One ice cream reflection I’ve had since relocating to the east coast is that by and large, the West Coast’s2 ice cream game is far superior. And believe me, New Yorkers, I’m begging you to prove me wrong, but so far, I’m not impressed. New York’s most ubiquitous ice cream chain, Van Leeuwen, is decent if you’re vegan, but if you eat dairy, it’s mediocre at best. Ample Hills is kaput. I tried Morgenstern’s in the West Village the other day, and while I appreciated the wide range of Weird Flavors (such as Raw Milk and Pickles N’ Mayo) and their deranged flavor categorization, the flavors I tried (Raspberry Black Sesame and Guava Cheesecake) were – tragically – just okay. The Guava Cheesecake had crunchy bits of graham cracker in it that seemed to be carelessly tossed in right before serving — they didn’t even have the decency to fuse in a pre-baked graham cracker crust into the custard, which to me, indicates a severe lack of craftsmanship and dedication. The flavors my friends got were better though, so maybe I’ll give it another shot.
Soft serve is pretty good here, if you’re into Carvel (though I’m still scarred from the time I was charged *ten American dollars* for an average-sized cone from an ice cream truck3), Mister Softees, or Surreal Creamery (which offers a gorgeous earl-grey vanilla / Vietnamese coffee swirl), but soft serve is not what I mean when I say ice cream.
I’ll give New York this: it’s a great gelato city due to y’know, all the Italians. A friend recommended I check out L'Albero Dei Gelati in Park Slope after describing a sweet memory of walking around the neighborhood one summer with their pear gelato dripping down her hands, and it was enough to convince me to give it a try. It didn’t disappoint: the sweet butter flavor was like a more decadent vanilla, and the mango and raspberry were perfectly light and refreshing. But while gelato can be wonderful, it'll never be ice cream.
The West Coast happens to have one big advantage: Salt & Straw. The ice cream chain started in Portland, Oregon and has since expanded to cities all over the West Coast (and also Florida for some reason). Las Vegas is the latest addition to their West Coast empire, which as some cruel, sick joke, has opened 5 minutes away from my family’s home this summer, mere months after I’ve moved thousands of miles away4. I’ve accepted that I’m destined to only experience Salt & Straw as a rare treat, cursed to never fulfill my dream of trying every flavor since their menu changes monthly. Last year, I did come close when I managed to try flavors from 7 out of 12 months while visiting LA an absurd amount of times (I don't really know how this happened and it probably won't happen again anytime soon). But thankfully, I have angels in my life who send me Salt & Straw on my birthday — they have a nationwide shipping service that delivers ice cream nationwide. It arrives in an insulated box filled with dry ice to keep frozen. This has somehow happened to me twice now, the most recent time from my bosses who somehow found out about my obsession after only knowing me for a few weeks.
But once I tore through my birthday pints, the pursuit of the city’s best ice cream had to resume, and it led me down some unexpected paths. I was recently added to a WhatsApp group for Muslims who live around Prospect Park (as corny as it sounds, when you’re new to a place, you yearn for community, even when it is a burden.) The admin of the group tried to start up a weekly walking club, where folks could meet in different areas of the park and go on walks together. After the first walking club meetup, they apparently went for frozen yogurt at a place in Park Slope called Culture. The mere mention of Culture sparked some frozen treat discourse, and despite my better judgment as a group chat lurker, I couldn’t stop myself from jumping in and divulging my thoughts.
After sending a couple of spicy takes in the group chat, I worked up the nerve to quietly show up to the next walking club meetup. The one person I vaguely knew who had added me to the group wasn’t going to the walk that night, and many of the group members had anonymous icons, so I didn’t exactly know who I was looking for. But the group admin shared their live location and rough whereabouts in the chat, so I headed in that direction until I arrived at an open field, where I proceeded to wander around, my dot inching closer and closer to theirs on Apple Maps. Eventually, I felt a couple of people looking at me and smiling — a bearded man and a desi woman around my age. When I glanced in their direction, they sort of waved, and I had to assume they were the people I was looking for. Once we realized that I had been looking for them, we all started laughing, imagining a scenario if the circumstances were different — that I was just a random hijabi walking around the park that they stared creepily at from afar, asking me to join their “club.”
A few others joined soon after, and we hung out in the park for a while before eventually making our way to a nearby ice cream place called The Social. Already, their flavor selection was promising — I was intrigued by their “morning in paris” flavor, which is flaky, butter croissant-infused ice cream with swirls of raspberry jam. Overall, it was really solid, and I enjoyed all of the flavors I sampled, even if their ice cream was a bit too saccharine for my taste. The banana pudding ice cream, despite its sweetness, was everything you could hope for, which is to say that it tasted exactly like banana pudding in ice cream form. In the moment, that was enough.
A couple of California scoop shops I dream of: Wanderlust Creamery (their Passion Fruit Cocoa Nib ice cream is luscious and perfect, and Abuelita Malted Crunch made me want to fall to my knees), and Santa Barbara’s best, McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams.
In accordance with the Snack Report house style guide, West Coast is capitalized because it is a country.
Another epidemic plaguing this city — nearly every ice cream truck I’ve seen lately doesn’t offer an undisputed classic, the chocolate-vanilla swirl cone. Every time I ask, they tell me they can place the flavors side-by-side or on top of each other, but NO SWIRL. My heart aches for home and Somi-Somi, which switches out its swirl combination flavors weekly.
AND this comes after years of me commenting under Salt & Straw's Instagram posts asking them to open a shop in Las Vegas, not unlike a stan commenting "COME TO BRAZIL" under their favorite artists’ posts. The betrayal!