September 12, 1983 | Vintage Insatiable
The Ice Cream Renaissance

        Surely this is what the decline and fall of Rome must have felt like: a jaded populace, all morality abandoned, lurching about the streets in search of new sensory stimulation. That’s what’s happening in New York’s ice-cream renaissance: Oreo… jelly bean… chocolate chip… mint patty… pretzel ice-cream-mixing revels. Taste buds know no shame. 

        Loath as I am to admit it, I can remember when Neapolitan, cleverly linking vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry in one brick, was an ice-cream thrill. Then came Baskin-Robbins’ 31 flavors, including Here Comes the Fudge. And then the quality backlash: Häagen-Dazs, rich and dense, cunningly pretending to a Scandinavian pedigree, though originally sneaking in from the Bronx. In the beginning, Häagen-Dazs sneered at the mad quest for variety, taking years to finally launch strawberry. Yet now it is hawking Swiss chocolate almond along with everyone else.
 
        A butterfat madness has seized us. Ice-cream folk heroes from Vermont and Massachusetts are braving Manhattan. Gelato, the zip codes. The Scandinavian and Swiss impersonators —Häagen-Dazs, Frusen Glädjé, and Alpen Zauber — are cloning themselves all over town, locked in feverish combat. The creators of New York Ice have dreamed up fifteen variations on a chocolate theme. A new butterfat high by the people who make Godiva chocolates could provoke the Supreme Court into an obscenity ruling on ice cream. And, of course, it was inevitable: Marketing minds would soon realize that the mere human brain could not do justice to the infinite potential for ice-cream invention. So now there is a computer to concoct frozen fantasies.
 
TRADITIONAL ICE CREAM
 
        Does Godiva melt candy and whisk it into that marvelous mocha-hazelnut-chocolate ice cream? It sure tastes that way. And there is a unique, almost fruity glow to Godiva’s chocolate. (Chocolate raspberry cordial is bizarre —I almost love it, but I’m not sure I could be faithful.) The crunch of amaretto cookies is sublime in splendid French vanilla. Only the Grand Marnier is a serious miss — with its odd, almost chemical perfume. And, yes, Godiva’s ice cream has guar gum in it, a stabilizer that makes it smoother than smooth. I refuse to stew over natural or even artificial emulsifiers and such. Not when most Godiva flavors taste so good. The new ice cream is dense; its 20 percent overrun equals Häagen-Dazs’s. (“Overrun” means the amount of air beaten into it; 100 ounces of ice-cream mix with a 20 percent overrun yields 120 ounces.) And it’s rich (20 percent butterfat). Detractors insist you might just as well lick a stick of butter. I think they’re bananas. Godiva is glorious.
 
Godiva, at Macy’s Cellar; Dean & Deluca, 121 Prince Street; Balducci’s, 424 Avenue of the Americas, at 9th Street; and other Manhattan specialty food stores and restaurants. A pint is $3.75.
 
        Last summer the powers that be at New York Ice – the trio that gave us grapefruit-Campari sorbet – launched their own ice cream (16 percent butterfat), with 38 rotating flavors, obsessively focused on chocolate — chocolate mousse, chocolate amaretto, chocolate meringue, chocolate coconut almond, rocky road, chocolate chocolate chip, black and white chocolate, the bittersweet chocolate that emerged No. 3 in New York’s recent ice-cream tasting and the quirkily textured but hauntingly flavored Belgian chocolate, plus Oreo, mud pie, and coconut fudge. (The overrun’s 80 percent, so 100 ounces of ice cream with that 80 percent overrun will produce 180 ounces.) Some of the ice creams taste a bit dry, but the flavors are intense, and the French vanilla is a champ (tops in our ice-cream tasting). New York Ice’s narrow slip of a shop could be spiffier, but requests for tastes are gracefully indulged. “What’s that Mexican vanilla?” a customer asks. The counterman smiles. “It’s different. Strong, with a taste all its own. Here, have some.” Outside, pilgrims linger on the bench next to the giant ice-cream cone, getting in their licks as the store’s mobile of pastel cones twists and turns.
 
New York Ice, 113 Seventh Avenue South A two-scoop cone is $1.25; a pint, $3.50. Also sold in several New York restaurants: S.O.B.’s; Café des Artistes; and Charlotte’s, 153 Waverly Place.
 
        There are connoisseurs who insist that Ben and Jerry’s Homemade, of South Burlington, Vermont, is the best ice cream in America. That the best could somehow be unavailable in New York was a challenge Dimitri Chatzidakis could not resist. Ben Cohen himself and his “famous Vermont cow” were on hand for the opening of Dimitri’s Spring Street café, in SoHo, all spanking and fresh in pale blue and gray. Dimitri is rotating Ben and Jerry’s 43 flavors, such as “dastardly mash,” mint with Oreo cookies, peanut butter chocolate chip, Heath-bar crunch, pistachio walnut, and vanilla with M&M’s melting in psychedelic blobs. The ice cream (15½ percent butterfat, 20 percent overrun) is pleasant enough, but not thrilling, and the chips and bits seem rather sparse.
 
Ben and Jerry’s Homemade, sold at Dimitri’s, 156 Spring Street (334-9239), and at 40 specialty stores in the five boroughs. A cone (“approximately two scoops”) at Dimitri’s is $1.25; a hand-packed pint, $3.25. The pre-packed pints at other stores go from $2.10 to $2.69.
 
        Time has not been kind to Alpen Zauber, the frozen notion from Brooklyn that aspired to be identified with “the Swiss commitment to excellence.” When it first appeared, in the spring of 1979, I hailed this alpine magic as a “Best Bet”, deliriously rich and creamy. “A wanton hand dispenses berries and nuts,” I wrote. “The rum raisin has more raisins than a fruitcake.” Alas, a chintzy hand dispenses fruits and berries now. Alpen Zauber (16 percent butterfat, 15 to 20 percent overrun) tastes gluey, and the rum raisin hand-dipped at Sweet Cream, the Columbus Avenue ice-cream parlor, was not rum raisin at all — it was rum mint, a strange aberration. I’ve asked Alpen Zauber to stop using my outdated plaudit in stores that carry his ice cream. I haven’t seen one lately, but if I do, I’m calling my lawyer. Interestingly, in New York’s blind tasting, Alpen Zauber’s vanilla, hand-packed at the Natural Source, on Columbus Avenue, scored a respectable fifth.
 
Alpen Zauber, 1394 First Avenue, near 74th Street. Also at Sweet Cream, 185 Columbus Avenue, at 68th Street; the Natural Source, 285 Columbus Avenue, at 72nd Street; and some 50 other stores in Manhattan. A single-scoop cone at Alpen Zauber is $1.10; a two-scoop, $1.90; a pint, $3.10. Prices vary at other stores.
 
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GELATO
 
        Intellectually I can appreciate the wispy primness of old-fashioned gelato, but senses jaded by our town’s mania for butterfat highs may find it… lean, a bit mean… wan and too often chemical. Gelatophiles thronging the stalls of Vivoli, in Florence, and Giolitti, in Rome, are devouring churned satin that tastes lush and smooth and rich—nothing at all like the gelato churned up here. Still, even that has its winning ways.
 
        Angelica, in the V where Seventh Avenue South touches Bleecker, blends a splendid bittersweet praline she calls bacio, and her light creams have the fresh innocence of a young girl on her first-Communion day. Everything is pale, pure, natural, never artificially silkened, and the citrus flavors can be tart and cooling.
 
Angelica, 82 Seventh Avenue South Most ices $1.50 for a one-scoop cone, $2.75 for two scoops; cones with seasonal flavors are $2 for one scoop, $3.75 for two scoops. A pint is $5.75 (regular flavors) or $8.75 (seasonal flavors).
 
        Myra Evans studied chemistry at Yale. Then she fell in love with gelato and opened Gelato Modo, on Columbus Avenue near 82nd, the spiffy green-gray-and-white gelateria she hopes to clone everywhere. The machine that concocts the 10-percent-butterfat gelati comes from Italy. Ditto the flavorings. Many are sedate or taste fake. But her sorbetto can be beautiful. The lemon is sharp as a knife. I loved it, but a friend complained that it closed his throat. Strawberry banana is a delicious mating, nectarine needs riper fruit, and melon can be wishy-washy. “Diehard Häagen-Dazs fans tell me they’ve sworn undying allegiance to gelato,” Myra Evans reports. The crowds here suggest she may be right. Is it the ices they love?
 
Gelato Modo, 464 Columbus Avenue A cup $1.40; a pint, $4.60.
 
        At Sant Ambroeus, the art moderne transplant from Milan on Madison Avenue at 77th, the chocolate gelato tastes like a Fudgsicle; coffee is café au lait, and very sweet; hazelnut holds back all taste till the end, when it’s oddly fatty on the tongue. But the sorbetti are refreshing, especially raspberry and even a sweet lemon. Tartufo—a ball of frozen chocolate, Grand Marnier, or hazelnut mousse encased in a firm bitter-chocolate casing—is strangely watery and sterile, with an impolite aftertaste.
 
Sant Ambroeus, 1000 Madison Avenue. Two-scoop cone $1.25. Tartufo  $2.50.
 
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THE MACHINE WARS
 
        Nurtured as we are on high-tech chrome-and-vinyl spiff, the mythic Steve’s Ice Cream, of Somerville, Massachusetts, seems almost tacky in its Village outpost, just north of Balducci’s. The day’s roster of flavors is lettered in calculatedly amateurish graphics (“barumba” or “banafee” or chocolate cinnamon raisin — a dozen of the rotating 44 flavors). They’re churned from a mix with 16 percent butterfat in two giant old-fashioned wood tubs with chipped ice and rock salt. Steve, a onetime Boston cabdriver and schoolteacher, is the sainted missionary of the mix-in, oracle of the doctrine that globs of exotically perfumed ice cream were made to be hand-blended with crushed Oreos and Reese’s peanut-butter cups and smithereens of Heath bars.
 
        There are only two stools for lingerers, and at times the line stretches around the corner, with a wait of 45 minutes for a custom-tailored fix. And New York is minor-league ice-cream turf compared with Boston, according to manager Amy Miller, who spent four years at the original store, just outside Boston. Arguing, debating, defending favorite labels — Bostonian’s take ice cream seriously: “You know,” she notes, “the way New Yorkers carry on about wine.” Want a taste? A staffer seems pleased to dole them out. The hand-dipped Oreo vanilla has good-size cookie chunks; there’s lovely crunch in the peanut-butter chip. The cream is rich and smooth. Hand-mashing butterscotch bits and crushed peanut-butter cups into vanilla takes time, but the hybrid is splendid. Behind us, the crowd is patient, not passionate. Amy observes, “In Boston, people plan ahead what they want that day. Here they sort of wing it.”
 
Steve’s Ice Cream, 444 Avenue of the Americas, near 10th Street A one-scoop cone $1.05;  two-scoops, $1.75. $2 for two scoops with mix-in. 20 cents more each additional mix-in. $2.25 print.
 
        “We’re taking Steve’s Ice Cream to the next level,” David Liederman boasts. Who can argue with a man who grossed more than $15 million last year on his glorious sticky chunked cookies? David’s Ice Cream is Liederman’s own blend—fresh eggs, sweet cream, vanilla from the bean: There’s just chocolate (17.4 percent butterfat) and very laid-back vanilla (16.1 percent). But he’s got a slim machine with a built-in computer that custom-mixes chunks of Lindt chocolate bars, fresh fruit, nuts, or David’s own cookies into his lush ice cream “to achieve supreme oral pleasure,” the brochure fantasizes. “I wanted to say ‘climax,’ but my wife X-ed that,” says David, dropping a big ball of vanilla into the hopper. “The computer is sensing the ice cream’s consistency,” he observes. “We’ll speed that up eventually.” Out comes wickedly irresistible peanut-butter-cookie crunch. “We think people will freak out over all these possibilities,” says David. “There must be over a trillion combinations,” he speculates, mooshing raspberry purée into chocolate ice cream. “The next generation of this machine will talk to people,” he predicts as the machine promptly squirts itself clean between mixings, splashing a bit.
 
David’s Ice Cream, David’s Cookie stores.One-scoop cone  $1.10;  two-scoops $1.99; each chunk-in is an additional 35 cents; a pint is $2.70. There’s a chunk-in machine at 749 Broadway, near 8th Street and at 1122 Third Avenue, near 66th Street .
 
        “You can have a different ice-cream flavor every day for five years and still have a hard time choosing what to have next” is the promise of Custom Creamery’s Flavor Factory, the sense-expanding notion of Dr. Jerry Lynn, self-styled “dentist to the stars” and his brother, Marvin, the belt manufacturer. That was Marvin himself at the controls of the Flavor Factory’s sometimes reluctant machine during introduction week at Lamstons. Handsomer than a Calvin Klein billboard in dark-blue gabardine, with ice cream (12 percent butterfat, 80 percent overrun) dribbling down his wrist, he pressed two rectangular bricks of vanilla ice cream into the machine with a plop of crushed Reese’s peanut-butter cups. Delicious, though a bit stingy with the candy. Salted pretzels ground into vanilla is curiously pleasant, too.
 
        The Lynn brothers discovered their 45-year-old ice-cream customizer—something of a Pinto compared with David Liederman’s BMW (it doesn’t give itself a shower between mix-ins, making for occasional odd overlaps of flavor). Its patents had lapsed. The Lynns had it redesigned to puree M&M’s, crunch bars, mint patties, malted-milk balls, candy canes, Life Savers, Snickers, Clark Bars, jelly beans, popcorn, Red Hots, and almost anything else that chips and crackles. Admitting, “David’s machine is sexier—it squirts water,” Marvin Lynn is confidently setting up Flavor Factories in Lamstons, Woolworth’s, and Sears, while brother Jerry busily sculpts and polished the teeth of the stars. Futures in cavities are a sure thing.
 
Flavor Factory, Lamstons, 477 Madison Avenue, near 51st Street; 39 Broadway, near Exchange Place; and 773 Lexington Avenue, near 61st Street; as well as Woolworth’s, 120 West 34th Street and 9-17 Dey Street. $1.35 a cup.
 
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THE TASTING

        Fleet runners assembled our town’s ice-cream aristocrats—twelve vanillas, eleven chocolates—for this tasting. Breyer’s vanilla was tossed in because its pure-vanilla-bean flavor would be a taste standard against any extract or vanillin-scented contender. In the final hour, remembering that Howard Johnson’s had emerged champion in my 1970 coffee-ice-cream competition, I sent out an SOS for four hand-packed pints from HoJo’s in Times Square.

        A trio of junior palates did their own tasting. Jessica Goldman, thirteen, confessed that she is “not too fond of chocolate.” Joey Goldman, eleven (favorite flavor: cheesecake), found the experience “interesting and easy.” Alexandra Elman, fifteen, confided her passion for coffee ice cream, Swiss-chocolate chocolate by Häagen-Dazs, and Weight Watchers’ Treat bars. Though my mouth has been gravely corrupted by Taillevent’s honey chocolate, Karen Pritsker’s mellow, rich nutmeg, and my own supernal chocolate almond chip fudge swirl, all four of us often agreed. Here’s how I rated the entries, starting with the best.

Vanilla 
  1. New York Ice French vanilla: Very eggy, homemade. Alex: “Buttery.” Joey: “Very different.”
  2. Sedutto “sweet satin”: Alex: “Excellent.” Jessica: “Yuck.” Joey: “May I take this home?”
  3. Howard Johnson’s: Classic elegance.
  4. Godiva: Good.
  5. Alpen Zauber: Good Flavor. Joey: “Excellent.” Alex: “Good, but bland.”
  6. Peppermint Park: Pleasant, thin. Alex: “All-American vanilla.”
  7. New York Ice Mexican vanilla: Very sweet, smooth.
  8. Frusen Glädjé: Sweet, stolid. Alex: “Unusual, very sweet.”
  9. Häagen-Dazs: Ungiving. Alex: “Not much taste.” Jessica: “Weird.”
  10. Bassett’s: Foamy; vanilla flecks but not distinguished. Joey: “Super.”
  11. Swenson’s: Much too sweet. Alex: “Weird.” Joey: “So-so.”
  12. Breyer’s: It may be real vanilla, but it’s anorectic. (The kids liked it.)
Chocolate  
  1. Howard Johnson’s: Great class, magnificent flavor. Kids: “Very good.”
  2. Godiva: Very special, almost fruity. Kids: “Good.”
  3. New York Ice bittersweet: Sophisticated, elegant. Jessica: “Raw cake batter.”
  4. Swenson’s: Intense chocolate. Alex: “Excellent.”
  5. Häagen-Dazs: Malty, velvet. Alex: “Dog food.” Jessica: “Gross.”
  6. Frusen Glädjé: Rich, serious flavor. Joey: “Very good.”
  7. New York Ice Belgian: Gritty texture, sophisticated flavor. Kids: “Horrible.” 
  8. Bassett’s: It has a chalky aftertaste. Alex: “This is too chocolate-y.” Jessica: “Yuck.” 
  9. Sedutto: Good taste, dry. Alex: “Yuck. Grainy.” Jessica: “Chalky.”
  10. Peppermint Park: Almost minty. Kids: “Good.”
  11. Alpen Zauber: Nice aftertaste, not a contender. Kids: “Good.”
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