Adventurous lickers at Victory Garden shun old-school soft serve for flavors such as jasmine (left) and black currant. (Lorenzo Ciniglio)
For all their razzle-dazzle, Thai basil cinnamon and wasabi ice cream flunk a critical test: the 7-year-old test.
When you were a kid, was there any way you would have chosen a scoop of that dreck over chocolate? (No. You would have used the word my fiancée used when hearing of wasabi ice cream: “Revolting.”)
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But for some perplexing reason, New York foodies revere bizarre frigid glops of cream that taste nothing like the icy treats they knew and loved when they were children. They argue a scoop of lychee ice cream is in league with strawberry. Ditto a scoop of honey lavender. Or avocado.
I can’t escape the suspicion these people are hopelessly affected.
I will concede that I’ve sampled flavors such as the olive oil ice cream at Otto — and I’ll even admit that it wasn’t quite as bad as I expected. But it also tastes like a well-executed stunt. And I find it alarming that the trend in ice cream seems to be with flavors that shock and awe rather than executing time-tested tastes done right.
Is it really fair that America’s greatest soft-serve ice cream (I speak, of course, of Carvel) gets relegated to a dinky little outpost at Port Authority (which it has to share with a Cinnabon!), whereas L’Arte del Gelato takes up prime real estate in Greenwich Village?
There’s something crazy about the fact that you have a much better shot of getting a great cup of strawberry or chocolate chip (without all the extra baggage) in Brooklyn — at Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory or Blue Marble — than finding anything as good in Manhattan.
However, Brooklyn isn’t a sure thing either. At Ample Hills Creamery in Prospect Heights, the menu includes Chocolate 3 Ways, Chocolate Flake, Chocolate Monkey, Dark Chocolate and Mexican Hot Chocolate. But I didn’t see plain old chocolate. The closest was Chocolate Milk, but they’re not making it right now.
Moreover, the trend of loading ice cream with cookies and pretzels and gobs of fudge has gone so far overboard that the results no longer resemble ice cream.
With Cold Stone Creamery offering everything from apple pie ice cream to banana caramel crunch to cake batter (cookie dough wasn’t enough?), something has gone very wrong. This is a bowl of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups swimming in chocolate sauce. The ice cream is an afterthought.
Ice cream is the thing you craved as you ran around a sweltering playground when you were a kid. It’s the bribe your mother offered when
she needed to run her errands.
It is every American kid’s Proustian memory.
It should be sweet. Tasty. Cold. No more than seven basic flavors (chocolate, vanilla, coffee, strawberry, pistachio, rum raisin and butter pecan — nine if you include chocolate chip and mint). The rest is noise.
mgross@nypost.com
TRADITIONAL TREATS
* Carvel
625 Eighth Ave. (Port Authority), 212-239-1165
You can’t get more back-to-basics than Tom Carvel’s soft-serve vanilla or chocolate (pictured). $3.99 per cone.
*
Blue Marble
186 Underhill Ave., Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, 718-399-6926; 196 Court St., Cobble Hill, 718-858-0408
Here, classics — from chocolate to butter pecan to strawberry — are served unadorned and delicious. Mini scoop for $2.90, regular scoop for $3.89.
* Van Leeuwen
48 1/2 E. Seventh St. (no phone number); 632 Manhattan Ave., Greenpoint, 718-701-1630; 81 Bergen St., Boerum Hill, 347-763-2979
Yes, Van Leeuwen may be guilty of serving flavors such as red currant and gianduja (essentially Nutella) but they’re still followers of straightforward ice cream: vanilla, chocolate (pictured), pistachio and strawberry. Small scoop for $4.50, large for $6.50.
* Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory
Corner of Old Fulton and Water streets, DUMBO, 718-246-3963; 97 Commercial St., Greenpoint, 718-349-2506
All of the eight simple flavors are good, but the vanilla chocolate chunk is the best chocolate-chip ice cream you’ll ever taste. And the strawberry will satisfy all berry monsters. Afterward, enjoy a stroll along the Brooklyn waterfront. Single scoop for $4, double scoop for $6.
* Ronnybrook Milk Bar Chelsea Market, 75 Ninth Ave., 212-741-6455
Skip the ginger, and stick with the chocolate or coffee. This is old-fashioned ice cream made on a farm. (The organic dairy, with its Holstein cows, is in Ancramdale, NY.)
You got a problem with that?
Single scoop for $3.25, double scoop for $4.25.
Do you prefer traditional or more adventurous ice cream flavors?