By Randi Gollin, ZAGAT.com staff editor
With summer beckoning, chefs nationwide are answering the ice cream siren call, dreaming up enticing new flavors to cool off customers. But they're not just focusing on the sweet stuff – some are incorporating out-there ingredients and playing musical chairs with the menu, moving cold treats from the dessert column to other parts of the meal.
A case in point: playful starters like red wine vinegar ice cream served with seared foie gras, beets, fennel and kumquats, and a hot or cold soup with thyme or lemon verbena ice cream, both concocted by chef David Myers at Sona in LA, which he co-owns with his wife, Michelle, a pastry chef and owner of the patisserie Boule.
Myers' foray into uncharted frozen territory – Parmesan ice cream is another of his creations – has been a natural evolution over the past three and a half years, the result of "experimenting and dabbling here and there."
"It's all about temperature, texture and flavor contrast," he explains, noting that ice cream's high fat content makes it a "great medium" for carrying flavors.
Alberto Cabrera's olive bread sorbet tops heirloom tomato tartare and sardine escabèche at Karu&Y in Miami
photo: Andrew Meade
At Karu&Y, a sprawling restaurant, lounge and catering complex scheduled to open this summer in Miami's Arts District, chef Alberto Cabrera will kick the savory concept further off the grid, offering the likes of olive bread sorbet with heirloom tomato tartare and sardine escabèche. Cabrera's seviche will use Key lime sorbet for the requisite acidity. "My style leans toward the movement that's going on in Spain," he explains. "The Spanish bring the dessert side of the kitchen into the savory side and vice versa," an approach that Cabrera finds especially refreshing in a warm-weather locale like Miami.
Sous-chef Shawn Darling and executive chef Christopher Daly of NYC's Aroma aren't necessarily El Bulli acolytes, but they do subscribe to the Mediterranean philosophy of using the freshest ingredients available, evident in palate cleansers like vanilla–olive oil sorbet (a takeoff, perhaps, on the famous olive oil gelato at NYC's Otto) or desserts like strawberry-avocado gelato.
"Certain combinations awaken new things in ingredients that you wouldn't expect," says Darling. "You don't really taste the avocado – it just lends a creaminess. It's like eating a super-premium, super-fatty, rich strawberry gelato."
Ever had a hankering for herring ice cream, or a bowl of mango–habanero pepper? Those were some of the "shock-value" flavors encountered by Megan O. Steintrager while writing East
Coast Scoops (Happy Belly Guides), a road-tripper's guide to the cold stuff. Steintrager feels that those kinds of far-out flavors work best when they mirror "savories that would be in a creamy presentation in a real-life dish," like the Nova lox version served at Max & Mina's, a kosher ice cream parlor in Queens, New York.
When it comes to unexpected concoctions, few hold a spoon to Jon Snyder, founder and creator of NYC's Il Laboratorio del Gelato, who uses traditional Italian recipes as a jumping-off point for incorporating flavors inspired by his world travels. "It's kind of the premise for the name of my company, being a laboratory where we can create new flavors," says Snyder.
Visitors to the retail area of his Lower East Side shop can choose from 20 options, rotated weekly from a list of about 140 developed for restaurants. Indeed, many of Snyder's best efforts have been "driven by chefs looking for unique flavors and really pushing my envelope with requests."
Snyder's flavor 'resume' includes tarragon with pink peppercorns for a Pierre
Hotel event; cherry blossom for EN
Japanese Brasserie; and honey-lavender for Molyvos. Of course, his shop also sells "an awful lot of vanilla and chocolate. That being said, we offer about eight different kinds of chocolate."
Chef Martin Heierling of Sensi in Las Vegas' Bellagio
Hotel is another ice cream innovator – but he declares himself "no friend" of savory versions. "Are you doing pepper ice cream and all that stuff because it's cutting-edge? For me, it's hard to understand," says Heierling.
Instead, he puts a twist on sweet treats via unusual ingredients like pandan leaf, which he encountered in Southeast Asia, where it's wrapped around chicken and meat for street food–style eats. Intrigued by its vanilla and nut flavor, Heierling decided it would make a perfect flavor base for ice cream. "I'm not the guy who invented pandan ice cream – pandan has been around for hundreds and thousands of years," says Heierling. "I'm just bringing it from a different culture and a different part of the world into my restaurant."
Frozen custard aficionados hit the jackpot at NYC's Shake Shack
Classic frozen desserts are also getting an update at the Shake
Shack, Danny Meyer's über-popular fast-food destination in NYC's Madison Park. There, gourmet takes on frozen custard, floats and concretes (frozen custard with homemade mix-ins blended in) have been served up in flavors such as cinnamon toast (made with beurre noir) and banana brittle.
"We try not to mess around with them too much," says general manager Carla Lalli Music, who notes that even when dressed up in contemporary flavors, these old-timey treats touch "that nostalgic side." And "when you get into the total package with the burger and fries, that brings people back to their childhood," she says.
Something that can't yet be said for the likes of red wine vinegar ice cream.