Mmmmmmm.....Ice Cream

Last weekend, Wife and I went on a “double date” with a couple from Law School. For dessert, we decided to try the famed “Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory.” For anyone who loves ice cream, this place is definitely a spot worth exploring. Wife and I both consider ourselves ice cream lovers, so this was a real treat. The place is popular – very popular. Even in freezing cold weather, we still had to stand in line for about half an hour at nine o’clock at night to get our ice cream fix. I hear the line is a nightmare on hot summer evenings.

Once it was our turn in line, we had to make that tough decision: what flavors should we try? Wife and I decided to get a three-scoop bowl to share (which was cheaper than each of us getting a single scoop). Wife really wasn’t much help with this decision (“Really, I like all of them”), so I selected flavors I knew we would both enjoy. The bottom of the bowl was filled with chocolate-chocolate chunk; on top of that was a pile of coffee ice-cream; our bowl of heaven was made complete with a heap of butter pecan. Without belaboring the point, Wife and I agreed that this was definitely the best ice cream either of us had ever experienced.

Here is what the NY Times had to say about the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory:

On a recent November afternoon at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, a new shop in a historic fireboat house under the Brooklyn Bridge, Mark Thompson was mixing chocolate. He was using Valrhona, the premier French chocolate, for his two chocolate-flavored ice creams, but he was not quite happy with it.
"It doesn't freeze well," he explained as he offered a visitor a taste of the mixture. A few minutes later, he furrowed his brow. "I shouldn't have done that," he said. "Now I've ruined your palate." That Mr. Thompson thinks about ice cream in terms of how it engages the palate is a testament to his obsession. Like an ice cream sommelier, he describes a great vanilla as "natural, clean and silky," and sings the praises of his favorite vanilla extract producer, Nielsen Massey, in a 15-minute lecture on the art and science of the vanilla bean. He laments the evils of bleached sugar and preaches the righteousness of fresh peaches over canned.
A self-proclaimed ice cream purist, Mr. Thompson decided to limit the number of flavors he would serve to eight: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, vanilla chocolate chunks, chocolate chocolate chunks, butter pecan, peaches and cream, and coffee.
"I just wanted to do the classics," he said. "I'm not trying to be Baskin-Robbins." He also decided that he would not sell any ice cream older than 10 days, to ensure freshness.