Bye bye, Blue Marble, Hello Steve's

The Village Voice's Fork in the Road food blog (lots of fun, highly recommended) had a piece today on a soon-to-be-opened and highly-anticipated (in this camp) ice cream shop at the former site of what I thought was the none-too-spectacular Blue Marble ice cream shop.

Steve's

Steve's is from Boston, but its new outpost will feature lots of Brooklyn-y products:

If ice cream can be said to have a terroir, the new Steve's is definitely that of Brooklyn. The company, which began developing and testing new flavors last year, is creating partnerships with a number of the borough's artisanal producers: to date, Salvatore Bklyn is supplying the ricotta in Steve's strawberry ricotta ice cream, Kombucha Brooklyn's eponymous brew is the base for a kombucha sorbet, and Plowshares coffee stars in a coffee-cinnamon ice cream. Taza, a chocolate company based in Somerville, MA, is also supplying chocolate for both flavors and toppings; its chocolate-covered cacao nibs appear in Steve's dairy-free mint-cacao chip.

I cannot wait for this wretched weather to disappear so I can throw on a sundress, flip flops and bike on over to Steve's.  You can get it by the pint but what fun is that?  Not fun.  Will definitely let you know what I find.

Upcoming ice cream events: Austin, TX, Brooklyn, NY and South Street Seaport, NY

My sources in Austin, TX, tell me that this Saturday from 10-7 brings a mighty, mighty Ice Cream Festival in Waterloo Park.  The $5 admission fee goes to children's charities, among others, and the weekend includes a homemade ice cream contest (just dangle that in front of me, why don't you, when I have to work that day), and an ice cream eating contest with someone named Joey Chestnut.

This guy is the champion?

I have seen an eating contest once on TV.  It made me never want to eat again.  The contestants ate bowls of mayonnaise that they shoveled into their faces with their hands.  However, I am older than 18 and I believe I could eat more ice cream than Joey Chestnut in six minutes, and I deeply regret that I am unable to prove this hunch, because I'm nowhere near Austin, TX at the moment.  So, Joey, sleep easy tonight; your competition's far away in New York.

Next Sunday, thank heavens, I will get my own mini-festival at the New Amsterdam Market down by the South Street seaport.  This description sounds like my dream come true:

"Sunday august 22, 2010
the market is open from 11:00am to 4:00pm

ICE CREAM FAIR AT NEW AMSTERDAM MARKET 12:00PM TO 4:00PM
special tasting tickets $20; proceeds benefit the market

This August 22nd we will celebrate the height of summer with six ice cream and sorbet makers including The Bent Spoon, Roberta's, Early Bird Cookery, Marlow & Daughters, MilkMade Ice Cream, and Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream. These artisans are committed to showcasing regional products and flavors. Each will create up to three unique ice creams and sorbets for the market using only seasonal or responsibly sourced ingredients.

With more than a dozen great flavors available, we know it might be hard to choose just one! You'll of course be able to get a regular cup or cone, but we'll also be selling tickets for an ice cream sampler, which will entitle you to six miniature ice cream cones with the flavors of your choice. Tickets cost $20, with proceeds supporting New Amsterdam Market. On a hot summer day, what better way to benefit the market and highlight the producers and flavors of the region?"

 My only complaint is, if they're selling "more than a dozen great flavors", why does my sampler packet only include six tastes?  Huh?  What about the other six+ that I don't get to taste?  Am I supposed to get another packet?  These are serious questions and I demand answers from the ice cream community.
 
Coming up on Monday night is a beer tasting and ice cream social at the Beer Table, in (where else?) Park Slope, Brooklyn.  Here's the info:

August 16th
Bent Spoon and Beer Table Ice Cream Social
New Jersey native and Bent Spoon ice cream maker/co-owner Gabrielle Carbone will make her way to Park Slope to co-host the first Beer Table ice cream social! Hailing from Princeton NJ, the Bent Spoon has gotten quite a following thanks to its stellar ice cream and use of seasonal ingredients from the area's farms and producers. Gabrielle and a NJ grower will give a small glimpse into the rich agricultural landscape of the southern Garden State. 4 flavors will be served along with beer pairings.
Tickets: $35. Please e-mail events@beertable.com for tickets.

Professional Foray #4, Blue Marble, Brooklyn, NY

Wednesday night, after an excellent meal at The Grocery on Smith Street with my genius friend/professional hero Michelle Goldberg, we hopped on our bikes and headed down Atlantic Avenue to the Blue Marble Ice Cream shop.  This location has more flavors than the one on Court Street.  We almost missed our chance, since the kindly chef at The Grocery, who spends so much time in the dining room you'd think he wishes he was a waiter, informed us that he makes the best ice cream in the world, after which our check was suspiciously slow in coming.  

Anyway, we made it.  I had read about their strawberry flavor on Yelp or a similar site, where someone was raving that it was the greatest they'd ever tasted.  It does have a very pronounced, tart strawberry flavor, but to my kiddie palate, it was slightly too tangy.  I can appreciate the appeal it would hold for more sophisticated ice cream connoisseurs, or for purists.  But I like an emphasis on the cream in my ice cream, and this tasted too fruity to me.  I also tried root beer flavor, which tasted like a root beer float, except without the wonderful textural interplay of fizzy soda and creamy vanilla ice cream.  Instead, those two sensations and flavors get mushed into one single not-as-delicious and even mildly disconcerting experience.

In the end, I went for (surprise) cookies and cream, chocolate and black cherry.  From here forward, I'm going to use cookies and cream, pending availability, as my benchmark flavor, as well as chocolate, the same way one can judge a Lebanese restaurant by its hummus and kibbeh.  Why?  Both of those flavors leave very little margin for error: either do them well, or go home. 

Soft serve in Rwanda; courtesy of Blue Marble Ice Cream

In Blue Marble's case, they were both tasty, but nothing exciting.  The ice cream itself is of a very high quality; they use milk and cream from an organic dairy co-operative in Pennsylvania where the cows eat grass (as opposed to all the other wretched scum they normally eat in a feedlot, according to Michael Pollan).  But neither of those flavors knocked me off my feet.  The black cherry with chocolate chips was very good, however - an upscale, organic and altogether smoother and more successful rendition of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia.  I'll be going back for a few other flavors (ginger and mint chip, for example) soon.

This company is notable, if not for its chocolate ice cream, for its social efforts.  They are promoting ice cream as a development solution in Rwanda, use eco-friendly materials and packaging, use organic sugar and serve organic coffee, and support local Brooklyn bakeries by selling bagels and brownies and the like in their shop.  I know it's a cliche to call such a yuppie paradise a "yuppie paradise," but it really is one, without being obnoxious.  It's just a nice place where concerned parents can treat their children and themselves to ice cream without worrying about pesticides and poisons and corn syrups and other demons.

Blue Marble Ice Cream, 420 Atlantic Avenue, 718-858-1100, 186 Underhill Avenue (Prospect Heights), new location at 196 Court Street (Cobble Hill), www.bluemarbleicecream.com, MiniScoops are $2.90, $4.25 and $5.15, regular scoops are $3.89, $5.75, and $6.95.