Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Hops and avocados meet ice cream
All sorts of specialty flavors — even vegan — at Salt & Straw
Bourbon and coffee ice cream leads off a tasting flight of four scoops.
Portland's hippest ice cream shop has made its way to San Diego. Salt & Straw recently opened a shop in Little Italy, and as it's done in previous expansions to San Francisco and Los Angeles, the business has wasted no time in collaborating with popular local brands to add to its collection of creative ice cream offerings.
Even before it opened, Salt & Straw teamed up with Modern Times Beer to concoct a hoppy orange sherbet infused with the brewery's Belgian style beers, a cara cara and blood orange sour saison (to be clear, the alcohol doesn't make it to the ice cream).
Vegan strawberry ice cream, made creamy with coconut
I've been to a Salt & Straw location in Portland, and enjoyed the creaminess of its signature flavor: sea salt ice cream with caramel ribbons. I found it at the top of the Little Italy menu, but there were over a dozen other intriguing flavors. I wanted to try them all, but for $11.50, settled for a four scoop taster flight instead.
Little Italy's latest dessert destination
I started with the Modern Times flavor. True to the brewery's ethos, Hopped Orange Creamsicle is a vegan ice cream — one of several on the menu. I'm not typically a fan of orange sherbet, or creamsicles, so I was really counting on the hops to delight me. They did not. Their bitter, floral presence was intriguing, but I'm happy to keep hops in their place: beer. But that's okay. This may have been the first Modern Times branded product I haven't enjoyed immensely.
It's also important to note, my problems with it had nothing to do with the ice cream being vegan. Indeed, for my second scoop I tried the vegan roasted strawberry, made with coconut cream. This Portland favorite was fantastic, with caramelized fruit flavors and a creaminess to rival anything else on the board.
Almost anything. Next up came the flavor, Avocado & Oaxacan Chocolate Fudge. If any flavor speaks to Salt & Straw's presence in Southern California, it may be this one. The avocado worked with the cream to yield exquisite texture. It's lightly grassy flavor found balance with a ribbon of Mexican hot chocolate style fudge spiced with the likes of cinnamon and cardamom, made with chocolate provided by L.A.'s esteemed Oaxacan restaurant, Guelaguetza.
Salt & Straw has a kitchen in Los Angeles, where it makes this and other local flavors. That also includes my fourth scoop: James Coffee & Bourbon. The whiskey component comes from L.A.'s Greenbar Distillery, but the coffee comes from Little Italy roaster, James Coffee Co. It's without doubt a winning combination, and while this flavor couldn't match the special creaminess of the avocado, it proved my all-around favorite.
Nevertheless, it will be no less easy to choose my next visit. Flavors rotate continuously, and I didn't even get to potential winners like the peanut butter, bacon, and banana vegan ice cream, Happy Birthday Elvis! Or the Peanut Butter Stout with Chocolate Chiccharon (with Belching Beaver Brewery).
Might be time to get a bigger belt.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Hops and avocados meet ice cream
All sorts of specialty flavors — even vegan — at Salt & Straw
Hops and avocados meet ice cream
All sorts of specialty flavors — even vegan — at Salt & Straw
Bourbon and coffee ice cream leads off a tasting flight of four scoops.
Portland's hippest ice cream shop has made its way to San Diego. Salt & Straw recently opened a shop in Little Italy, and as it's done in previous expansions to San Francisco and Los Angeles, the business has wasted no time in collaborating with popular local brands to add to its collection of creative ice cream offerings.
Even before it opened, Salt & Straw teamed up with Modern Times Beer to concoct a hoppy orange sherbet infused with the brewery's Belgian style beers, a cara cara and blood orange sour saison (to be clear, the alcohol doesn't make it to the ice cream).
Vegan strawberry ice cream, made creamy with coconut
I've been to a Salt & Straw location in Portland, and enjoyed the creaminess of its signature flavor: sea salt ice cream with caramel ribbons. I found it at the top of the Little Italy menu, but there were over a dozen other intriguing flavors. I wanted to try them all, but for $11.50, settled for a four scoop taster flight instead.
Little Italy's latest dessert destination
I started with the Modern Times flavor. True to the brewery's ethos, Hopped Orange Creamsicle is a vegan ice cream — one of several on the menu. I'm not typically a fan of orange sherbet, or creamsicles, so I was really counting on the hops to delight me. They did not. Their bitter, floral presence was intriguing, but I'm happy to keep hops in their place: beer. But that's okay. This may have been the first Modern Times branded product I haven't enjoyed immensely.
It's also important to note, my problems with it had nothing to do with the ice cream being vegan. Indeed, for my second scoop I tried the vegan roasted strawberry, made with coconut cream. This Portland favorite was fantastic, with caramelized fruit flavors and a creaminess to rival anything else on the board.
Almost anything. Next up came the flavor, Avocado & Oaxacan Chocolate Fudge. If any flavor speaks to Salt & Straw's presence in Southern California, it may be this one. The avocado worked with the cream to yield exquisite texture. It's lightly grassy flavor found balance with a ribbon of Mexican hot chocolate style fudge spiced with the likes of cinnamon and cardamom, made with chocolate provided by L.A.'s esteemed Oaxacan restaurant, Guelaguetza.
Salt & Straw has a kitchen in Los Angeles, where it makes this and other local flavors. That also includes my fourth scoop: James Coffee & Bourbon. The whiskey component comes from L.A.'s Greenbar Distillery, but the coffee comes from Little Italy roaster, James Coffee Co. It's without doubt a winning combination, and while this flavor couldn't match the special creaminess of the avocado, it proved my all-around favorite.
Nevertheless, it will be no less easy to choose my next visit. Flavors rotate continuously, and I didn't even get to potential winners like the peanut butter, bacon, and banana vegan ice cream, Happy Birthday Elvis! Or the Peanut Butter Stout with Chocolate Chiccharon (with Belching Beaver Brewery).
Might be time to get a bigger belt.
Comments