Grom

After an evening of dancing to satanic ska on a boat, sometimes you just need to cool down with a nice cone of chocolate gelato.

Until my recent discovery of Fresco, Grom was easily my favorite gelato shop in the city, and it still might be, if only for the extradark chocolate sorbet.  Grom is a chain that comes from Italy, but my friends who spent time in Italy before Grom came to NYC reported living off the stuff there.  And for good reason.  While even the chocolate sorbet is not vegan (they started adding a small amount of egg for unclear reasons -- I couldn't tell the difference after the change), the taste is just unbeatable.

I often say that the point of dessert is to take the taste of chocolate and put it into different textures.  No one in the city understands this better than Grom.  This sorbet really does taste like a dark chocolate bar (~70-80% -- not too sweet) in ice cream form.  And just to remind you of it, they throw in dark chocolate chips.  Really superb.

Grom also has a dark chocolate gelato (Venezuelan origin as opposed to the extradark's Colombian origin).  It's good enough to be one of the best in the city, but I never wind up getting it, because the extradark is there.

The other notable item at Grom is the hot chocolate.  It is thick.  Unbelievably thick.  Basically melted chocolate -- the same Venezuelan chocolate as in the gelato.  Some of the best hot chocolate in the city, in my opinion.  But better yet is throwing a scoop of the extradark chocolate sorbet in the hot chocolate.  It's an amazing dessert for any weather situation.

Despite all this, though, my standard order is still usually just the extradark chocolate sorbet, straight up.

Bottom Line: The best taste in the world (a dark chocolate bar) in one of the best textures in the world (ice cream).  Unbeatable.