ICE CREAM REVIEW: Hay Rosie Craft Ice Cream

My search for the best ice cream in New York continues ….

SADLY, HAY ROSIE CRAFT ICE CREAM IS NOW CLOSED.

When it comes to ice cream, I’m about as far away from a “vanilla person” as can be. For me, the weirder, the better. I’m always intrigued when somebody attempts to make an ice cream flavor that is surprising and creative. I have vivid memories of an amazing soy sauce ice cream and a killer tomato sorbet. But that also means I’m a tough critic when it comes to those wacky combinations. If it’s going to be weird, it’s got to be really good.

Hay Rosie Craft Ice Cream is a cute little new ice cream shop in Brooklyn that has one of the weirdest line-ups I’ve seen in quite a while. You can forget about vanilla here. Instead, they’re serving a rotating menu of things like “Lemon Bar” and “Sriracha Popcorn.” I was actually not going to get ice cream after one of my Brownstone Brooklyn tours, but the idea of a spicy popcorn ice cream was tough to resist.

The shop has gotten a bit of attention for their Barnburner (hot ice cream sandwiches), but I was interested in their Tasting Flight. The girls working the counter were bubbly and eager to give out samples. But instead, I decided to drop $5 to get four egg-shaped scoops of their four weirdest concoctions.

The scoops were literally placed in an egg carton and I was given a wooden spoon for sampling. It truly reminded me of a dessert at a fancy restaurant where the avant garde ice cream is served more to show off the skills of the pastry chef than for actual indulgence.

I started with the Lemon Bar, which was made with lemon curd. The ice cream was creamy, but not quite sweet or tart enough. It sort of hovered in the center, which might be perfect for some people. I enjoyed the Sage Chocolate Chip quite a bit with deep sage-y floral notes yet not enough chocolate chips.

Stranger was the Sriracha Popcorn, which almost worked. Gummy bits of sriracha provided not enough heat and I could have used some buttery notes to at least emulate the idea of popcorn. But things went really off the chart when I got to the Bonfire at Midnight.

Now I’m a big fan of smoke flavor, yet this smoky chocolate reminded me of eating lighter fluid (not that I’ve ever done that on purpose). The fake smoke flavor was overwhelming and alarming. I honestly wasn’t sure what was in it and if I should be eating it. It tasted like that moment when you strike a match and there’s that strange burning chemical smell. Not a good thing in ice cream.

This whole experience was certainly interesting and I like how I accidentally chose four ice creams that play on four different flavor components – spicy, herbaceous, smoky, and tart. I think there’s something to that.

So I’d definitely come back to see what else they do, but I hope they keep themselves in line and focus on things that actually taste good rather than combinations that just sound provocative and pull people off the streets and into the shop.

Is Hay Rosie Craft Ice Cream the best ice cream in New York? It’s a little too weird even for me. While some of the flavors are interesting and tasty, two out of four are off-the-rails bizarre and rather unpalatable. 6 out of 10.