Results tagged “icecreamsummer”

The summer before last, I ran a series called Ice Cream Summer, whereupon I undertook the dreadful, nasty, difficult, and troublesome task of tasting the wares of many of our fair city's many ice creameries. I crowned the victor as Gelato Paradiso, a then-new gelato bar located smack dab in the heart of all the dressed-up character melee of Hollywood Boulevard. But so much has happened in the world of frozen dairy (or non-dairy,...

We suppose we're going to have to cop a "better late than never" stance as we offer up this belated year-end look at food in LA. Actually, we've been thinking about this one since the day before we boarded a plane in mid-December for our long-ish holiday trip, when the waiting area at our nail salon already had their copy of Los Angeles Magazine's January issue, featuring their picks for the top ten restaurants of the year, but ours was not in our mailbox; for us that meant we'd be getting the word late, and, we suppose, better late than never. (Of course, we're kind of not impressed by their picks, so even though it sounds like we're passing the buck a bit, all in all it's a moot point.) But you'll still love us, right?

Since summer is winding down, we figured now would be a good time to wind down our Ice Cream Summer endeavor. We took the well-intentioned suggestion to try Venice's Robin Rose, but soon realized they'd been out of business for two years. Then the mention elsewhere in internet-land of Gelato Paradiso's new 3 month-old location in Hollywood sent us scurrying over the hill and in their front door. Among all the other ice cream options near that infamous intersection of Hollywood and Highland, we found paradise!

This weekend, the Chinatown Business Improvement District is putting on a two-day Chinese Food Festival, aimed at getting folks out and about and eating in LA's historic Chinatown. Food and fun are on the menu, with attendees having the opportunity to sample tasty dishes from local restaurants, see Taiwan’s spectacular Hsiao Hsi Yuan Puppet Theatre, catch continuous showings of two of our favorite Chinese films, Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet, meet faculty and interns from the Yo San University School of Traditional Chinese Medicine who will offer free acupuncture demonstrations, tongue reading, and pulse analysis, and see some teapot-juggling, tai chi, martial arts, plate-spinning, bowl-kicking, and contortionists. There are tons of games and activities, including a kids' "Chinese Fear Factor." And...tons of food to eat. You can even taste some of Fosselman's Chinese-inspired flavors (and, hey--they're our #2 pick in the Ice Cream Summer series!)

Would you believe that it's our fifth week of ice cream tasting, and we're still as giddy as a kid in a candy store when we get in front of those freezers full of creamy, sweet goodness? This is why we feel slightly apologetic for having put the young lady behind the counter at Bennett's this weekend through her paces with our eager sampling and mild line of questioning. Bennett's, located in the north east corner of the Farmer's Market, has been family owned since 1963, and they make their own award-winning delicious flavors of ice cream on the premises. Typical for a tourist trap locale like the Farmer's Market, the cost of a cone is a little over the top, with a single scoop costing $3.00. We sampled our way through the case, starting with a couple of their most popular, like the coffee ice cream with caramel and banana concoction called "Fancy Nancy" (we regret not asking how it got its name), and "Choffee Choffee" which was another coffee based flavor with chocolate covered coffee beans in the mix. Both flavors were tasty, not too rich and not too sweet. We took a taste of the lighter and tangy Key Lime, which is one of our top pie picks, and makes for a decent ice cream taste, although not as thrilling as we'd hoped. The Green Tea was a bit nondescript, so we'd advise to head to Mashti Malone's for the more exotic tastes. Cherry Vanilla was a fantastic offering, with the cherry part thankfully not crossing over into the medicinal taste, as cherry can so often do. But we settled on a flavor we confess we've had there before, and a flavor that we don't often order: Butter Pecan. Our co-taster (who dove eagerly into her Mocha Almond Fudge the second it was passed to her) was happy with her choice, but had a little flavor envy. We tried to balance the melting danger with enjoying every lick; Bennett's ice cream is quite good, and is worth savoring! A trip to Bennett's can definitely serve as the upside to a trip to the Farmer's Market, if being there isn't necessarily your cup of tea. Final rankings so far in LAist's Ice Cream Summer have this spot pulling a respectable 3rd place!

There's nothing more quintessentially Hollywood than a legend of dubious origin. Such is the myth of Mashti Malone's, the curiously exotic ice cream maker that has set up shop right in the heart of Hollywood for 25 years. The truth is that when Iranian brothers Mashti and Mehdi Shirvani took over what was once the Mugsy Malone ice cream parlor, they couldn't afford to change the entire sign. So the tale is as sweet as the brothers' signature flavors of delectable ice cream, and as unique as the ingredients they use for their creations.

Okay, so here's the thing about LAist's Ice Cream Summer: We don't expect to find anything revolutionary in ice cream. We don't hope to uncover a hidden gem. We feel we should spend just as much time on the places that are, to the purists, perhaps just a bit less desirable. Places that are more, shall we say, ubiquitous. Places that exist, that enjoy some popularity, and that just happen to be popping up all over the city. Well, all over the country. Such is the case with the franchised purveyor of ice cream, Coldstone Creamery. They're certainly an ice cream option in LA, so we're counting them in.

The folks over at Lickity Split say "if you like ice cream, you'll love frozen custard." We knew not of what they spoke, so we dedcided to make the new Lickity Split location in the heart of Hollywood our next stop on the Ice Cream Summer tour of the city. Frozen custard, as it so happens, originated in 1919 on Coney Island, and has sustained its popularity since then, primarily on the East Coast and in the Midwest. It's claim to fame is that it has less butterfat, sodium, and sugar than other ice creams. Last week we discovered that the more butterfat the better when we sampled Fosselman's; how do things at the other end of the spectrum stack up, we wondered. Or is comparing frozen custard to ice cream like apples and oranges?