Professional Foray #1: The Odeon's ice cream cart

Last night my friend Helen and I went on my first professional tasting trip last night, to the Odeon's ice cream cart.  Thank you to my friend Maisie for sending the tip, by the way.  Helen, who had graciously arrived for dinner carrying a six-pack of Baked by Melissa nano-cupcakes, cheerfully accepted that our dessert was going to have more courses than our dinner.

What a delicious little gimmick.

The Odeon's ice cream cart is right in front of the restaurant, underneath the striped awning.  The management has sweetly put several benches out on the sidewalk on West Broadway, so ice cream customers can enjoy the sight of strolling Eurotrash and Tribeca families, attractive down to the toddler, while they savor their cones.  The waffle cones are house made, as is the ice cream, which is made fresh every day, three flavors per day, including butter pecan, strawberry, rocky road (I will be going back expressly to sample this flavor when the time is right), pistachio and banana vanilla wafer.

Last night there was good news and bad news.  The bad news was the mint chip, which had an overtly herbal peppermint flavor that tastes more like a stick of gum or a swig of mouthwash than ice cream.  The good news was the cookies and cream, one of my favorite flavors, which had huge, generous chunks of homemade chocolate cookies.  The cookies were large and dry and crumbly enough to stay crispy and provide real textural contrast to the ice cream, although they didn't have the lardy Oreo-style cream filling that makes commercial cookies and cream sometimes strangely satisfying (I'm talking about when that cream filling starts coating your mouth because the cold of the ice cream means the fat molecules aren't melting as swiftly as they should be.)  The coffee was also excellent news - the flavor, in its sweetness and delicacy, reminded me of Haagen Dazs, but the texture was softer and lighter, and nicely melty.  $4 for one scoop, $6 for two.

145 West Broadway, (212) 233-0507, www.theodeonrestaurant.com/ (call for flavors of the day)