Sweet Rose Creamery (Los Angeles)

February 13, 2015 by Ice Cream Anonymous

Flavors this visit: Rosemary date salty pistachio (recommended) + Caramelised white chocolate gelato (solid) + Chocolate (solid)

Price: High, 3 scoops $7.50, no splitting scoops, two tasting permitted

Details: Sweet Rose Creamery is a Los Angeles-based chain of high quality, creative ice cream flavors - everything from candied kumquats and salty pistachios or fig compote with cinnamon wafers to meyer lemon buttermilk sherbet and paige tangerine sorbet (yes, some of this fancy-ness is the unfortunate trend of tacking on adjectives to reasonably standard flavors - a la the rampant Berkshire Pork-ification of menus.)

Of the three flavors, the rosemary with date and salty pistachio was the most successful. To be sure, it's not for everyone, a bit savory with very pronounced rosemary flavor, it's as if Sweet Rose borrowed a Persian page from the popular fellow ice cream joint Mashti Malone. Definitely interesting and worth a taste. The chocolate, recommended by the server as "different" and which may have been malted chocolate, tasted almost like chocolate sorbet (which it wasn't) and, while texturally interesting, flavor-wise was non-distinct. The most milquetoast was the caramlised white chocolate gelato. White chocolate is almost always problematic as a flavor - not as strong as regular chocolate, and the caramelisation, such as it is, didn't seem to draw much out. Texture-wise, it also wasn't very gelato-y. I also tasted the old rasputin stout, which, one can only say, is very stout-like.

Having been to Sweet Rose Creamery before, the best flavor to try is the fresh mint with home-made chocolate chip, which is very good. Some of the sorbets are also very good, but more on a case-by-case basis. In general, the orange sorbets are accurate but not as interesting over a full scoop.

Also, of the many locations, the one in The Grove is the best in terms of decor and staff.

Morgenstern's

February 02, 2015 by Ice Cream Anonymous in New York, 2 Scoops

Flavors this visit: Cardamom Lemon Jelly (recommended, cardamom with lemon jelly mixed in) + Bittersweet Chocolate (recommended, caramel-ish) + Apple Brandy Vanilla (solid)

Price: High, 3 scoops $8, no splitting scoops, no tasting when crowded

Details: (usually longer on first post for store)

Tucked away on a little strip of Rivington between Bowery and Christie, Morgenstern's is the most recent entry into the increasingly competitive Manhattan high-end ice cream and gelato scene. Like Laboratorio del Gelato and OddFellows, Morgenstern's too comes with a haute cuisine pedigree, which you can look up elsewhere.

In terms of aesthetics, if it were possible to find a sub-speciation between the somewhat precious laboratory technical craft of Laboratorio, and somewhat precious, hipster-nerd-ness of Oddfellows, Morgenstern's would be it. The storefront looks like the platonic ideal of an ice cream parlour and is staffed with at times (read often) too faux-friendly staff, who, unbelievable, makes a case for a mandatory ice cream scooping test a la hair or nail salons. The net result is an infuriatingly and unnecessarily tedious process of order (and taste bud) fulfillment. Seriously, on a cold Saturday evening, the two staff members (one taking orders, the other scooping) took 25 minutes between ordering and delivering one cup of ice cream. Rocket science it ain't.

Morgenstern's claims to approach their ice cream with a twist, sans egg and apparently low-sugar. The first time you taste their ice cream, it may come across a little more melt-y, but this may also be because their scooping method requires them to take ice cream quarts in and out of the freezer, which increases temperature unnecessarily. The second difference is their mix-in method, e.g. on their cardamom lemon jelly which is a cardamom base with lemon jelly mixed in. This results in sometimes very intense flavors without the base being too sweet. This also, however, can result in less happy surprises, like their chocolate oat, which is an oat ice cream with chocolate mixed in. If you're into that, great, if, like one customer before me, you're into chocolate, doh.

Now, on to the ice cream flavours - Morgenstern's redeeming quality is definitely its large and highly varied selection of flavours (linked below.) The most popular of these seem to be szechuan peppercorn chocolate (better in concept,) salt and pepper pinenut (ditto,) and cardamom lemon jelly (recommended.) Overall, their chocolates are, for me, the highlight - texturally rich, almost like fudge, they're consistently good. The problem with other, more exotic flavours seem to be a matter of ambition over judgment - there's no doubt a szechuan peppercorn could taste amazing, it's just either too little or too single dimension in most cases. That said, definitely worth a look for their chocolates and selected other flavours (coffee has gotten some good feedback on prior visits.)

http://www.morgensternsnyc.com/