Food Adventuring Around NYC
We all know ice cream makes you gay. And when I say gay, I mean happy. Skippingly, exuberantly happy. And, in the case of a brilliant ice cream truck downtown, we might have to use both definitions of the word gay. Now, of course, enjoying treats from The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck doesn’t necessarily …
SADLY, LULA’S SWEET APOTHECARY IS NOW CLOSED. I almost missed Lula’s Sweet Apothecary when I first walked by it. It’s in a very strange location for an old timey ice cream parlor. It’s far east in the Village on a grungy street that’s crowded with dirty dive bars, hipster restaurants and alternative boutique shops. And Lula’s …
For the longest time I thought Cones was an Italian owned gelateria. The signs on the walls even call the stuff gelato. And the mouthfeel of the frozen treats are definitely more dense and richer than your typical ice cream. But just because this stuff is made like gelato doesn’t mean it has to be …
Ice cream at a steakhouse is usually forgettable. It’s often consumed after a gut-busting meal and it’s possibly more painful to gobble up the dessert than it is pleasurable. But even still, the ice cream is rarely more than the usual vanilla or chocolate. And it’s almost never homemade. Quality Meats has never played by …
SADLY, BROOKLYN ICE CREAM FACTORY IS NOW CLOSED. There is no doubt that, exterior wise, Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory is the most aesthetically pleasing of all the ice cream shops in the city. It’s on the Brooklyn Waterfront in DUMBO, just down the block from Grimaldi’s Pizza. And based on the lines here (I waited 20 …
SADLY, XIE XIE IS NOW CLOSED. A cool thing about living in one of the food capitals of the country is that if there’s a famous chef on Top Chef or a restaurant documented on the Food Network, there’s a good chance we can hop a train and go taste the food. And isn’t that what …
SADLY, SCREME GELATO BAR IS NOW CLOSED. There’s been a lot of controversy lately in the food blog and media world revolving around free food. There’s no mystery here: it’s one of my favorite things. But stemming from an article in the Times about food writer Josh Ozersky’s wedding that was catered by some big …
SADLY, GUERILLA ICE CREAM IS NOW CLOSED. Everybody’s gotta have a gimmick, right? It’s certainly true when it comes to ice cream. Sure, you could make simple flavors and hark back to the old ice cream shops of the 5o’s. But isn’t it fun when you flamboyantly dress up your Mr. Softee truck (Big Gay Ice …
I’ll never forget on one of my first visits to New York touring NBC Studios and then walking through a strange underground mall. I remember high-end shops, fast moving foot traffic, and food courts. It was an exciting hybrid of New York urban life and my shopping mall rich South Florida adolescent. When I first …
SADLY, DENNY’S DELIGHT IS NOW CLOSED. I find myself on Coney Island so rarely (in fact, I’ve only been three times in the nine years I’ve lived in New York) that I feel I need to take full advantage of the journey and explore and taste as much as I can. No, I didn’t ride the …
I really really wanted to like Blue Marble. Really I did. It’s co-owned by Alexis Miesen and Jennifer Dundas, two friends who had a dream of making ice cream. Dundas is a working New York stage actress and we have mutual friends, so I had a particular interest in her story and her product. The …
SADLY, LAST LICKS IS NOW CLOSED. I don’t know why baseball and ice cream go so well together, but it’s true. Maybe it’s because the magic of the All American sport and the sweet creaminess of rocky road are both the object of many young boys’ affections. But ice cream crosses gender lines, so shouldn’t we …
SADLY, RONNYBROOK MILK BAR IS NOW CLOSED. Upstate in the Hudson Valley at Ronnybrook Farm, cows are milked and raised the old-fashioned way. No hormones, no homogenization, no pesticides. In other words, it’s all so organic that it makes organic labeled products look positively processed. The only thing that is not eco-friendly is the commute you …
There was a time, not that long ago, that I had a dream of opening my own ice cream shop. I went to ice cream school for a weekend at Penn State. I would spend many hours at work just writing down concepts and flavor ideas. I even went so far as to think about …