Staff Picks: Fav Ice Cream Flavors

Garlic Ice Cream Keeps the Vampires Away

Alex Chester

First off, I’d just like to say that Garlic Ice Cream is not my favorite flavor. Mint Chocolate Chip is; however, this is a flavor I grew up with as a Cali girl. My family would take monthly road trips up to the Bay Area and we would always pass through Gilroy -- the garlic capital of the world. There, I discovered Garlic Ice Cream. It’s pretty weird, but sweet and delicious. This flavor isn’t for everyone and you should be prepared to smell like garlic for quite some time after.

One of my favorite restaurants in California is The Stinking Rose. It serves everything with garlic, and of course, for dessert, they have garlic ice cream with caramel molé sauce. It is so damn good.

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Green Tea or Coffee

Alison Lea Bender

I like ice creams that have a bit of a bitterness to them. Also, while we’re on the subject, I prefer it in a cone, as I like to lick my ice cream.

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Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream

Rebecca Lee Lerman

I love chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream. I am the kind of person who will eat a jar of Nutella by the spoonful, take Nesquik Chocolate Powder, pour a teensy bit of water in it, and eat it like a pudding. I would eat a whole bowl of cookie dough batter, but I hear there’s something called salmonella… and that’s bad for you… so I will sift through the vanilla ice cream to eat only the big chunks of cookie dough hidden in the mix, leaving the vanilla ice cream untouched.

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Vanilla

Lauren Hardie

Every. Single. Time. Sure, it sounds like a boring answer. But if you’ve ever walked into an Ample Hills on a weekend afternoon in the middle of summer, you’ll know that special type of overwhelm that comes from standing in line way too long for a sweet treat, only to get to the front and realize you have no idea which combo of flavors you want to assault your palate with.

Maybe The Commodore? Or how ’bout It Came From Gowanus? Why not Salted Crack’d Caramel? I’ll tell you why not -- it’s all way too sweet, and no matter what you get, you’ll keep looking at someone else’s scoops thinking somehow they got something better. This can be applied to any ice cream shop on the planet. Play it safe. Get Vanilla Bean. Because “why mess with a classic?”

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It Came from Gowanus

Autumn Henry

Ample Hills Creamery has some dope ice cream flavors but by far my favorite is It Came From Gowanus. From the creamery: “The shop-specific flavor for our Gowanus scoop shop, It Came From Gowanus tells the story of an imagined movie monster emerging from the polluted canal. Full of deep, dark mystery and endless surprises, this flavor is a salty dark chocolate ice cream mixed with orange-scented brownies, hazelnut crack’d cookies and white chocolate pearls (an homage to the oysters tasked with cleaning up the waterway).” Sweet and salty lovers delight!

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Matcha

Gen Parton Shin

Matcha, but when you mix actual matcha powder into Vanilla Ice Cream. The bitter and sweet go so well together. I highly recommend it.

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Beni Emo Ice Cream

Melissa Slaughter

Never heard of Beni Emo Ice Cream? Then clearly you’ve never been to Okinawa, my obachan’s homeland. Beni Emo is an Okinawan sweet potato that is almost impossible to find outside the island. It’s not ube; it’s not taro. But it is delish! A decade ago, we did a family trip to the motherland and I ate this ice cream every day. Maybe that’s because we went in July when Okinawa is sweltering, or it’s because it quickly became my favorite ice cream. Probably both. And I’ll be dreaming of this ice cream all summer.

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Zen Butter and Black Sesame

Sam Tanabe

I wasn’t able to try the Original Chinatown Ice Cream Factory until I moved to NYC. They feature a variety of “Asian” flavors, and my go-to choice is a cup with black sesame and zen butter (peanut butter with toasted sesame seeds). I gotta say, I love their dragon mascot too. Very cute!

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Mint Chocolate Chip

Olivia Chen

Inherited from my dad -- his favorite as well!