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Today Dessert Truck posted this notification on Facebook: “Our daytime spot will be Park Ave between 51st and 53rd Sts. We’ll be somewhere along the two blocks. We’ll be serving our regular menu and will be open from 11:30AM - 4PM. In case we have any parking issues, please bear with us as we work out the kinks for daytime service. If you’re working in the area, do stop by, even just to say hi! Also, if you could let anyone else who works in the area know that we’ll be there, we would really appreciate it.”
I came down kinda hard on Dessert Truck, because of the weird cake-batter texture of their chocolate bread pudding, but after I wrote about it they started adding a few chunks of bread onto the top of each cup, which kinda won me over.
The Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream truck sits in a sunbeam on a quiet Soho side-street, like an upscale Mr. Softee patiently waiting to be discovered by the hordes crossing Prince Street. Unlike a truck with an irksome jingle, however, Van Leeuwan exudes class, from the gentle yellow color and elegant font used on the vehicle, to the flavors list, which ruminates on the high-quality ingredients used in its ice cream.
There’s some examples of this globe-trotting, gourmand-speak on the web site: hormone-free milk from cows that graze “in pastures in the foothills of the Adirondacks,” vanilla beans harvested from “organic bourbon and Tahitian vanilla orchids grown in Papua New Guinea,” pistachios grown “in the rugged lands of Bronte, in southern Italy.” I expected that the thoughtfulness employed to pick and present these ingredients would also produce a tastier-than-average ice cream. But while this is different from your average cone, it’s pretty unmemorable.
If you’ve ever had homemade ice cream, that’s what it’s like–a bit icy in texture, and lacking in the upfront flavor and cloying sweetness. I thought that Van Leeuwan’s product tasted fresh and clean, but this was probably mostly a result of how it was presented. I sampled the Currants and Cream ($3.95 for a small) first, and ended up eating all the tart little frozen currants, leaving the uninteresting cream behind in a trash can. The subtle frozen heat in the Ginger flavor was intriguing, but quickly grew boring with only a few bursts of candied ginger in the mix. The winner of the three I tried was the Giandijia, a blend of hazlenut and Michel Cluizel chocolate. It had a subtle rich chocolate flavor, nicely balanced with earthy hazlenut, with a creamier texture than the other two.
While I’m a little confused by the paradox of an environmentally-friendly ice cream truck (how much gas does it take to fill that thing, let alone air-lift pistachios from Italy?), the use of some local, small-farm products and cups made from natural fibers is a nice touch. Plus the location alone, in the wilds of uber-luxurious Soho, makes it a refreshing pit-stop after an exhausting day of shopping. Be sure to get your artisanal ice cream fix before the last lazy days of summer slip away.
Van Leeuwen ice cream truck - Greene Street between Prince and Spring Street from 1pm-8pm; University Place between 11th and 12th St. 8-11pm.
Check their site for more locations.
Remember when Tasti D was the king of low-calorie soft-serve? No more. In the past eighten months, frozen yogurt shops have sprouted all across Manhattan, and the boom shows no signs of slowing. Last month yet another yogurt place, 16 Handles, opened up on Second Avenue not far from the new Pinkberry on St. Mark’s Place, (with a buy-one-get-one-free offer for August). It seemed like overkill, but I was hopeful. Maybe 16 Handles can save me from my Pinkberry addiction.
Not long ago I silently mocked the lines winding out of each newly-opened Pinkberry, packed with people willing to shell out $6 for a cup of sleekly-packaged swirly girly low-cal dessert something, for no one was quite sure if it was really yogurt, or a batch of chemicals–not that anyone really cared. But then Pinkberry got its frosty fangs in me. The concoction is creamy, tart, and sweet at first taste, then the flavor gently fades, leaving you face-down in your cup, chasing that initial tang all the way to the bottom. Topped with enough supersized, abnormally-perfect raspberries and blackberries to make it acceptably healthy, each costly cup of this embarrassingly compelling stuff drove me from the bright shop into the shadows, blissfully snacking and hating myself at the same time.
I tried Red Mango, an Asian import which has recently landed on 14th street and claims the Pinkberry entreprenuers swiped its yogurt concept; it wasn’t the same. I missed that tarty zing–that sugary something–that ineffable Pinkberryness…
16 Handles‘ plain tart yogurt is pretty close to what I require in a frozen yogurt. The whole place is self serve, and offers 16 rotating flavors (chocolate, raspberry tart, and mango sorbet stood out to me), and a salad-bar sized selection of toppings from fresh fruit to yogurt chips, granola, ground-up butterfingers, and long-forgotten breakfast cereals like cinnamon toast crunch. I liked being able to control how much of everything went into my cup and pay by weight–I ended up shelling out $4.09 for my strawberry-and-mango-studded creation instead of the requisite $6.23 for the Pinkberry three-topping medium. But be sure to come armed with a little self-control, or it could get expensive.
I have one critique–the little wooden eco-spoons were awful. Fro-yo needs to be lapped from smooth white plastic, not off a splintery surface. If you dare to go on the front lines of the yogurt war, dash around the corner and get yourself a proper spoon from Pinkberry on St. Mark’s Place.
16 Handles 153 Second Ave. between 9th and 10th Street
It’s easy to miss L’asso–maybe it’s the abstract signage. Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s a block away from Lombardi’s, a New York institution. I went a few times when it first opened, liked it, and forgot about it. It’s doubly easy to miss the fact that they serve pizza by the slice, something that Lombardi’s and many other famous, old-school pizzerias don’t do. But in case you think they don’t know their pizza, L’asso prides itself on adhering to the rules for Pizza D.O.C.–guidelines that specify the type of tomatoes (san marzano), the type of mozzarella (buffalo milk), and the type of oven (domed, brick, and heated to 420 degrees), deemed necessary by the maestros Italy to produce a genuine neapolitan pizza.
The atmosphere is very laid-back chic-cafe, with a wine list and dubby mood music, and a fairly extensive menu with about eighteen varieties of individual-sized pizzas. The slices ($2) are behind the counter, and since most of their customers are ordering off the menu, yours will have probably been sitting for a little while and warrant reheating. It’s still as decent a slice as you’ll find in the area - just stick to the margherita and steer clear of the blandly cheesy bianco. On Monday through Friday they have a happy hour special - $1 slices with $3 Brooklyn Lager on tap. They were churning out slices at a good clip during my happy hour-timed visit so mine was fresh from the oven, with a light, slightly chewy crust, sweet-and-tangy sauce, just a few melty daubs of fresh mozzarella, and drizzled in olive oil. Granted, it was about half the size of a regular slice but it was a freakin’ DOLLAR so I wasn’t complaining.
I am over sloppy, face-sized, cardboard-crusted Artichoke slices–this is closer to a slice as it should be.
L’asso 192 Mott Street at Kenmare
Sun-Wed 12pm-12am, Thurs-Sat 12pm-3am
Snackish is about finding cheap and tasty things to eat in New York City.