Food & Drink

A food critic and two 6-year-olds review NYC’s craziest ice creams

Vanilla may be the most popular flavor in the rest of the country, but in New York, when it comes to ice cream, it’s just like everything else: the wackier, the better.

From Midtown to the Lower East Side, Gowanus to Carroll Gardens, craft ice-cream makers are invading the city with daring flavors from savory to spicy to floral, sometimes splashed with booze or even flecked with meat. But are these scoops revelatory creations — or just crazy for the sake of crazy? A few experts weigh in.

Meet our judges

From left, Steve Cuozzo, New York Post food critic, Daisy Hodges, 6, and George Walker, 6Eilon Paz; Brian Zak; Astrid Stawiarz

Wacky Ingredient: Saltines

Ample Hills(305 Nevins St., Gowanus, Brooklyn; 347-725-4061)

Ample Hills at 305 Nevins Street in BrooklynEilon Paz

The Place: When Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna opened Ample Hills in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights three summers ago, their salted crack caramel quickly became the best-selling flavor they run out of fastest. “I wish it weren’t,” Smith confesses half-jokingly, explaining the labor-intensive process of caramelizing large amounts of sugar on the stove top until it’s nearly burnt, giving it a bitterness that distinguishes their version from other salted caramels out there.

Ample Hills ‘It Came From Gowanus’Eilon Paz

The crazy scoop: For their gigantic new Gowanus location, which has a roof deck overlooking the area’s namesake canal, Smith wanted to create a fitting flavor. Drawing from both his sci-fi writing background and the mythology surrounding the waterway, he came up with It Came Out of Gowanus. “It’s the deepest, darkest, murkiest chocolate ice cream,” he rhapsodizes — and appropriately chock-full of gluttonous surprises: white chocolate pearls, a nod to the waterway’s once-prolific bivalves; chocolaty “crack” — made with saltine-butter-sugar cookies and hazelnut paste; and chunks of Grand Marnier-laced brownies. ($4.75, small; $6.25, large)

Steve’s taste test ★★

“Super-rich. Hazelnut-crack cookies actually crackle. White chocolate pearls register more on the eyes than on the palate; orange brownies are imperceptible to either. The chocolate’s so tar-thick, it barely ran after 10 minutes in the hot sun.”

George’s taste test ★★★

“Mmmm-mmm. This ice cream is rich and chocolatey.”

Wacky ingredient: Sriracha

Hay Rosie(204 Sackett St., Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; 347-987-4983)

Hay Rose at 204 Sackett Street in BrooklynEilon Paz

The place: Tucked off Carroll Gardens’ main drag, 2-month-old Hay Rosie is an inconspicuous cream-colored tasting room for the shop’s production facility, and open on weekends only. Inside, owner Stef Ferrari, a former beer sommelier, experiments with dozens of flavors, eight of which land on the menu at any given time. Lemon Bar, made from a confectioners’-sugar base and swirls of fresh lemon curd, is a regular fixture, while wackier items like tomato feta are still in the experimental stages.

A customer tries out Siracha PopcornEilon

The crazy scoop: Hay Rosie’s downright polarizing flavor is Sriracha popcorn — a result of “my never-ending quest to make everything I like into ice cream,” Ferrari says, copping to religiously eating popcorn doused with the hot sauce. To transform her favorite snack into a frozen treat, she dehydrates a locally made version of Sriracha, turning it into flakes that are mixed into a sweet base that’s steeped with freshly popped popcorn, which is then strained out. ($3.75, single; $5, double; $6.50, triple)

Steve’s taste test ★

“Popcorn is a bad idea for an ice-cream flavor — and Thai hot sauce is an altogether terrible one. The Sriracha appears as dehydrated flakes, which taste as shrill as your worst nightmare.”

George’s taste test ★

“Yuck! I don’t want a second bite.”

Wacky ingredient: salt and pepper

Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream(2 Rivington St.; 212-209-7684)

Morgenstern’s at 2 Rivington in ManhattanEilon Paz

The place: Coming from the restaurant world has given Nicholas Morgenstern a unique perspective on creating the 35 flavors on offer at his Lower East Side shop. “A lot of the time, flavors are very intuitive for me — I just go by my gut,” says the owner of the Lower East Side’s veg-centric luncheonette El Rey and the 3-month-old Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream. Despite the shop’s old-fashioned fixtures and gleaming white counter and stools, a modern artisanal foodie movement is afoot. Just beforeserving ingredients — such as the pretzels for salted pretzel caramel and pistachios for green tea pistachio — are mixed in, which “preserves the crunch factor” and punches up flavors.

Morgenstern’s Salt & Pepper PinenutEilon Paz

The crazy scoop: Inspired by a popular cookie at El Rey, the salt and pepper pine nut features a sweet cream base countered by salty undertones, punctuated with whole pine nuts and dominated by a peppery kick. ($4, one dip; $6, two dips; $8, three dips)

Steve’s taste test ★

“Much less exotic than its name suggests, this Nordic-sounding number consists mainly of salted, anything-but-‘plain’ vanilla strewn with pine nuts — which tasted like zilch and made no impression on the excellent ice cream itself.”

Daisy’s taste test ★★★

“The taste of pepper is strong, but I can’t stop licking it. It’s actually quite yummy when you get used to the pepper.”

Wacky ingredient: Chorizo

Oddfellows(75 E. Fourth St.; 917-475-1812)

Oddfellows at 75 East 4th Street in the East VillageEilon Paz

The place: Chef Sam Mason was ahead of the adventurous ice cream trend when he and partners Holiday and Mohan Kumar opened the first OddFellows in Williamsburg a year ago. Since then, Mason has developed 130 flavors, eight of which are exported to — and regularly sell out of — the tiny East Village offshoot, which opened in May. With experience at boundary-pushing restaurants including wd-50, Mason’s mind swims in eccentric ice-cream flavor ideas, from foie gras to perennial crowd-pleaser peanut butter and jelly.

Oddfellows’ Chorizo CaramelEilon Paz

The crazy scoop: Chorizo caramel swirl. Yes, salty-savory Spanish sausage, paired with caramel and ice cream. “It was obvious in my wacked head,” says Mason. To concoct the macho flavor, he renders the chorizo so it yields two key ingredients: hardened bits of meat that get blended into the simple milk, cream and sugar base; and oil, which is incorporated into the caramel. The result is a chewy texture bursting with chorizo flavor. ($4, one scoop; $5.25, two scoops)

Steve’s taste test ★

“It made me long for good old pickles and ice cream. The chorizo is blended into the ice cream, which is worse because there’s no avoiding it. If your idea of a good time is pork sausage essence insinuated into caramel and cream, it’s for you. But it’s not for me.”

Daisy’s taste test ★

“This is absolutely horrid. Sausages are not supposed to be in ice cream. You eat them for breakfast. I think I am going to throw up.”

Wacky ingredient: curry

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams(600 11th Ave.; 212-582-9354)

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in Gotham West Market at 600 11th AvenueEilon Paz; Anne Wermiel

The place: In the 12 years since Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams opened its first shop in Columbus, Ohio, the brand’s gained a cult following, thanks to owner Jeni Britton Bauer’s unusual flavor combinations like absinthe and meringues, now served in scoop shops across the country. In early July, a Jeni’s shop finally surfaced in Manhattan — although it’s only here until September — at a pop-up in Gotham West Market. The sleek stand serves just seven flavors, including the signature salty caramel, which Britton Bauer started making in the ’90s at a restaurant helmed by a French chef. His accent was so thick, she misinterpreted his instructions; it auspiciously resulted in an especially salty — and especially delicious — version of salted caramel. “People would drive in from neighboring states to stock up,” recalls Britton Bauer.

Jeni’s Bombay ChocolateEilon Paz

The crazy scoop: Will the magic be replicated with her exclusive-to-New York Milk Chocolate Bombay? It looks like any other chocolate ice cream — except there’s crunch hidden inside from bits of toasted coconut and an aromatic, almost maple aftertaste, which comes from the defining Bombay No. 3, a curry blend from New York spice shop La Boite. ($6, small; $7, medium; $8, large)

Steve’s taste test ★

“This milk-chocolate-based confection tastes fairly tame on the ‘wacky’ scale despite curry notes of turmeric, fenugreek and cloves. An alleged dose of honey oil mostly sits it out, and dried coconut flakes only get in the way.”

Daisy’s taste test ★

“I always get chocolate when we go for ice cream — but this doesn’t taste very nice. It’s got strange pebbly bits in it. They’re very gingery and spicy and they make my tongue feel funny. I want a glass of water.”