Fresco

Fresco is a new gelateria in the East Village.  It opened maybe a month and a half ago, and I have been approximately twelve thousand times since discovering it a month ago.  (In fact, I was next door at Veselka with Leila's friend Emily, and she insisted we try out this new place.  I, not having heard anything about it, was confident I would not be impressed by yet another gelateria.  Emily and I dragged Leila back there less than a week later.  I would say that we dragged her by force, because we would have if necessary, but trying to convince Leila to eat gelato does not require much force.)

Fresco is a beautiful store.  It is furnished with benches made from reclaimed Coney Island wood.  And it is staffed by some of the nicest people I've encountered in all my abundant chocolate hunting.

Fresco serves many flavors of gelato.  Many of those flavors are very good.  But we don't really care about that here.  Because there is only one flavor that matters.

The top left will be our subject for discussion today.

The chocolate gelato at Fresco is certainly among the very best in New York City.  But even more impressively, it is probably the most unique totally different from any chocolate gelato I have ever tasted (since CMS, Fowler, and Strunk & White all seem to agree on this rule, I will comply, though the rule is complete nonsense -- thanks [but no thanks] to Josh, another impressive chocolate lover amongst us).  The gelato base is made with cocoa powder, and then the cold base is mixed with hot, melted chocolate.  If you've ever tasted iced hot chocolate (for example, at Chocolate Bar), you know that some very small bits of chocolate sort of separate out in the drink, making the texture somewhat inconsistent.  The same happens here, with astonishingly pleasing results.  The gelato develops a fascinating chew and a great chocolate taste.

In addition to gelato (and sorbet), Fresco has some decent chocolate chip, chocolate chocolate chip, and other sorts of cookies (not made in-house), croissants (from the excellent Ceci Cela), coffee, and more.  They used to have some pretty-good-but-not-quite-worth-the-money vegan cake-like things (including a chocolate one), but they sold out of them.  I think they said they would be reappearing.  But if you are reading this blog, you probably already know what to do here.

Bottom Line: Eat chocolate gelato at Fresco every day of your life.