GASTRONORMOUS

Many people don’t get too excited about non-dairy frozen desserts, but in New York, the “ice” is perhaps the most loved traditional treat of summer (sorry, Mister Softee, the ice has been around longer). As Italian ice, it is ubiquitously found at pizza parlors in its least inspired form throughout the city (brand is almost always Genos), but if you want the tastiest treat, decline the pizza parlor option. Instead go to traditional Italian neighborhoods and look for ices sold out in front of restaurants, pasta shops, or bakeries. Similar ices can been seen being hawked by street vendors with little carts on the street and called coco helado, especially in Latin neighborhoods. Sorbettos, sold at the many good artisanal gelaterias around the city, are more intensely flavored, often more exotic, and more expensive cousins of the ice. All three are very popular across the city, irrespective of socio-economic-cultural differences. Why this is, I can’t say. But I can say that in on a hot, humid, New York Summer day, the last thing I want is a fatty, cream-rich dessert, no matter how cold, that will fill me up and slow me down. No, only the decadent-in-flavor, but not fat content really appeals.

On Saturday, after my trip to the Farmer’s Market, I headed over to the new ice cream and coffee window at Provisions. They sell a limited number of Ciao Bella gelato and sorbetto flavors. Unfortunately, they do not carry any of Ciao Bella’s fantastic fruit-wine combo sorbetti; the wine lends an usual depth and dimension to the one-note fruit. But they did have mango (belying the chalkboard list with that flavor excised), lemon, raspberry, and strawberry. I got the mango. It was delicious. The texture is denser and gooier than your typical sorbet, and much less watery than your typical Italian ice, with nary an ice crystal in evidence. And the flavor was really, really mangoey. It was delicious, but true to its mango source, intensely sweet. If I had to do it over again, I would get half lemon-half mango, to cut the sweetness a bit.

On Sunday, after a delicious brunch at Frankies 457 on Court Street, we decided to head over for a little dessert at our favorite place for ices in the neighborhood: Court Pastry Shop (actually, it is my favorite ice place in the entire city, second only to Ralph’s, which has a seasonal stand on the boardwalk at Coney Island). On the way down Court Street, we got stuck in a 10-minute deluge, which we were forced to wait out under some scaffolding as we were mostly umbrella-less. But we persevered. Such is the Siren-like lure of Court Pastry Shop ices; once they are invoked, you cannot rest until you have that paper cup in hand.

They excel at the non-fruit flavors here. The chocolate, pistachio, and custard are the best. I do believe they have some milk in them, but they are still light and refreshing, unlike their heavy cream cousins at the Baskin Robbins (slash Dunkin’ Donuts) down the street. I usually go for the custard flavor here, a vanilla ice scented with sweet spices and studded with crunchy, honest-to-goodness hazelnuts (ever had hazelnuts in an italian ice before? I didn’t think so), but on Sunday I ordered half chocolate and half custard, all in a very generously sized small ice (the photo was taken after I had taken a few bites). The chocolate has a mild chocolate flavor with a hint of cinnamon, and is just a delicious as the custard flavor.

There are several places to buy ices in the immediate vicinity, but Court Pastry Shop is the only one where I have ever seen a line crowding the sidewalk. That tells you something about the quality of their unusual, almost decadent, ices.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Delivery/Take Out, Food musings, Restaurant reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.