Tried it last weekend and thought it was ok. I can see the appeal for some people, some of the flavors can be intense in a good way. But overall, I didn’t care for the lack of creaminess for the regular and the vegan ones, the texture is not to my preference for an entire scoop. On top of that, it is very pricey for small portions. An extra 50 cent surcharge for the vegetarian flavors on top of a pricey $5 scoop is onerous to me. And I’m someone who happily pays more for good not necessarily great ice cream.
I’d prefer to go to Cool Haus down the street. I like the textures and flavors there better.
I live walking distance from Salt & Straw in Venice but I hadn’t yet managed to try the ice cream because the line always seems so long. Yesterday afternoon after another late lunch at Gjelina (lamb sausage pizza - yay), I stuck my head in and confirmed that one doesn’t need to stand in line to buy the prepackaged pints so I picked up a couple to bring to dinner at a friend’s house last night. We had chocolate gooey brownie and almond brittle with salted ganache and they were both really really good. Huge chunks of delicious brownie in the former. A couple people got bites of the latter that they found unpleasantly salty but that didn’t happen to me - I found that the two together in one bowl created the perfect mix of salty and sweet . Sweet Rose Creamery is the other fancy ice cream shop in our regular rotation, but based upon this one sampling I think I prefer Salt & Straw for both texture and flavor.
As a side note, the special flavors this month are the Fermentation Series. Maybe I just have plebeian taste in ice cream, but I wasn’t even tempted to taste any of them. Two of them - fish sauce caramel and dill pickle sorbet - sounded actively unpleasant to me. But maybe a more adventurous soul will give them a try.
I can confirm that Leo Bulgarini does amazing pairings with wine-gelato and sour beer-granitas. He did a little tasting for me that absolutely blew my mind.
Granted, they only have matcha soft serve but it blows away any other green tea/matcha soft serve (or any soft serve imo) due to the texture and amazingly smooth aftertaste.
Then walk down a few blocks to Mikawaya and get the black sesame ice cream.
I realize many of you have tried their mochi’s from trader joe’s which are fine but their ice cream is really flavorful, the black sesame actually has a nice roasted aftertaste and the little crunchy black sesame seeds compliment everything perfectly. Even if you’re not crazy about green tea and black sesame flavors, this is a destination worthy duo if you happen to be in the arts district/little tokyo.
Also, can we throw creamistry some love? They are one of the few liquid nitrogen ice cream chains to have survived and if you still haven’t tried it yet it’s worth a trip.
You may think it’s a gimmick and the prices are steep but it definitely doesn’t melt as quickly as regular ice cream and the texture is so creamy yet rich. Try to cookie butter with marshmallow cream with cookie dough morsels around the perimeter, to me this beats any of these gourmet ice cream places in LA in terms of sinful indulgence.
We ate really well this weekend but finally getting to Mashti Malone’s was a real highlight for me. Kid was freaking out about noodles in ice cream. His two favorite things combined.
Salt and Straw uses about 2-3 gums in their recipes. They also use tapioca . They also use more air in their ice cream. If you don’t want cream and eggs in your ice cream as a stabilizer then Salt and Straw is the way to go. McConnell’s is the best ice cream by way of butterfat cream and has the lowest overrun ( the amount of air in the ice cream). S&S tastes ok, but know what your getting.
. Sweet Rose Creamery is the other fancy ice cream shop in our regular rotation, but based upon this one sampling I think I prefer Salt & Straw for both texture and flavor.
Was this only at the OG Brentwood location?