STORY: After having lunch, my friend and I met up with a couple of other friends we knew from grad school. FOR ICE CREAM! Today I had felt like roaming around West Village, and therefore chose Dominique Ansel's kitchen as our next ice cream testing ground. Typically Ansel's kitchen is known for its famous cronut, which ironically was not available at the West Village location. However! They did have soft serve ice cream :) Which is what I came for, of course.
One of the primary reasons why I chose Dominique Ansel's was because I previously checked their Instagram account and it turns out that day, Sunday, October 16, was the very last day of the soft serve season for Dominique Ansel's Kitchen. Noooo!! 😱
Therefore, I definitely had to try it. And try I did!
WHAT: Soft Serve - 2 Flavors swirled together!
⚪️(L) Ice Cream Base: Burrata Milk
⚫️Toppings: Balsamic Caramel Microbasil, & whole strawberry confit
⚪️(R) Ice Cream Base): Salt & Pepper Caramel
⚫️ Toppings: Crispy Potato Gaufrett, Devil's Food Cake bites, & Maldon Sea Salt
WHERE: Dominique Ansel's Kitchen, West Village
WHIT’s scale out of 5:
Creativity: 😉😉😉😉😉
Presentation: 😎😎😎😎😎
Taste: 😋😋😋
Texture: 😜😜
Value: 😄😄😄😄
Overall Experience: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
THOUGHTS: Did you ever read Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? And have you read the part about chewing gum that was essentially a four-course meal in itself? I felt that this ice cream treat I tried here was almost like that. In ice cream form.
My stomach said at the end, I ate a whole meal with this. Savory and sweet? All there! Vegetables and fruit? Yes! Chocolate? Check. The first thing I ate was the fried waffle-cut potato gaufrette (French for a fried potato wafer shaped like a waffle)! My taste buds was surprised at first, and then burst with savory happiness. (And hey, I ate a vegetable! LOL)
The Salt & Pepper Caramel half of the soft serve tasted like caramel candy that was very icy. Think Werther's candy (remember those from childhood? I do!) in soft serve form. I did notice that this soft serve was water-based. I also tasted pepper! Initially I could taste a hint of it and wished for more, but eventually after many licks it got there. I appreciated the peppery kick :)
Now I like basil, but it was a bit weird at first that a leaf of it was added as a topping. Kind of like salad + ice cream? IDK. Regardless, it was another vegetable I ate with this ice cream! YAY haha!
I really liked the cone that the ice cream was swirled into - it was like a candied waffle cone, glazed with a syrup that made it crunchier but melt-in-your-mouth, and sweet. More of these candied waffle cones, please! :)
After maybe about ten minutes of chatting with my friends and licking the ice cream, I hit upon sweet strawberry treasure!! Before reaching the bottom of the cone, there was the Strawberry Confit (if I apply the logic of duck confit to this, does this mean Strawberry was boiled/cooked in its own strawberriness? I'm curious why they named this strawberry as such. Hmm. 😳), which essentially looked to me like a strawberry fruit so doused in syrup that it was a strawberry gummy. It was also very chewy and sweet.
I think the devil's food cake was alright. However! The chocolate highlight for me existed at the bottom of my cone, which was lined with chocolate. I thought it was a nice finishing touch to the cone and this treat overall.
When their soft serve and hopefully these same two flavors come out again, I would like to try these separately! Between the two, the Salt & Pepper Caramel had a much stronger flavor than the Burrata, and the Balsamic Caramel (which were the dark brown dashes of balsamic vinegar on the Burrata side if you look closely at the photo) was lost in the other Caramel. I really wished I had tried it separately, and I almost did, meaning I would have gotten two soft serves, but my friends convinced me otherwise. Thank you for keeping my waist trim ;P
