Fresco: Still the best

Our recent silence on the subject serves only to show the persistant truth.

Fresco peppermint cookie

As I'm sure you know by now, we love everything about Fresco. Their hot chocolate is currently my favorite in the city. Their chocolate gelato is mind-blowing. This cookie? Less good.

Let me be clear: still a really good cookie. The texture was chewy, just the way I like it. The chocolate-peppermint bits were evenly spread out. They just weren't chocolatey enough. This was our own fault. We could have ordered the double chocolate cookie. Instead we decided to branch out. Moral of the story: just stick to chocolate. Always.

BOTTOM LINE: If you are an intense chocolate lover, to the point where all other flavors are wasted on you, then this cookie will not represent to you the best of Fresco's offerings.

Fresco Hot Chocolate

Fresco has hot chocolate!  And hot caramel, and hot lemon poppy, and hot any flavor you want!  They simply melt their gelato in a machine, with milk added, and you get something amazing:

I made the incredibly smart decision to throw a scoop of the chocolate gelato back into the melted gelato-based hot chocolate.  This is what I would call an intermediate-to-advanced level chocolate lover move.  Try it elsewhere.  It rarely disappoints.

Bottom Line:  I would never have thought to do it, but I guess I am unsurprised that amazing gelato can easily be turned into amazing hot chocolate

Fresco has chocolate sorbet!

And it is amazing.  It tastes like a fresher, better version of Ciao Bella's excellent dark chocolate sorbet.  Good news for all you vegans and lactose intolerants out there.  Also for those of us who are such chocolate purists that we think that any ingredient that isn't chocolate is just getting in the way.  And having tried it, the chocolate gelato/chocolate sorbet combo is truly exquisite.

They only had it in the back room today, but they assured me it will be rolling out right away.

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.