Brief ice cream round-up: Coolhaus and L'Arte del Gelato

It's after Memorial Day, which means we are in full-on ice-cream-every-day-until-October mode. A quick recap of some of the ice creams we're eating:

First, Coolhaus ice cream sandwiches.



This particular one is dirty mint chip ice cream between double chocolate cookies. Coolhaus is a food truck, and it has more adventurous flavors you can try (like Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch cookies, and Fried Chicken and Waffles ice cream). And they have more chocolatey flavor combinations, as we have eaten previously. But this one hit the spot. Fresh mint, chewy chocolatey cookie, and I am happy.

Next up, L'Arte Del Gelato. Continuing in my mint-and-chocolate flavor combination craze, this is a scoop of mint chip gelato with a scoop of Valrhona chocolate gelato. I got it from the L'Arte del Gelato stand on the Highline.



It's okay. I mean, if you're nearby, and you're in the mood for gelato, definitely eat it. But I have to agree with David: I've eaten L'Arte del Gelato a number of times and have never been blown away. There is gelato in this city that I would journey to eat--L'Albero dei Gelati, for example--but L'Arte del Gelato is not one of them.

BOTTOM LINE: Thank goodness it is ice cream season at last. I mean, I was eating a lot of ice cream even when it wasn't ice cream season. But at least now that feels more culturally desirable.

Disappointments

My phone broke, so I have been without a camera.  But that won't stop me from complaining on the internet!

So I went to OTTO Enoteca.  There are a lot of things to like about Otto -- like that board that displays whose table will be next in that old-timey flip-card way and (more importantly) the amazing gelato.  But there are also a lot of things to dislike about Otto, like the way they capitalize all the letters in their name and, well, everything else.  Just as Cafe Grumpy's hot chocolate made some top-10 list, Otto's made one or two or maybe most of them.  But listing Otto's is far more outrageous.  First of all, Leila and I share the pet peeve of restaurants' deciding to stop serving their signature (chocolate) dishes.  Otto serves their apparently popular hot chocolate during only a narrow window in the winter.  My recent "successful" procurement of Otto's hot chocolate came on my seventh attempt.  But the problems only begin there.  I tried to get my hot chocolate to go, but they literally did not have any paper cups in the entire restaurant.  They forced me to drink it on the spot.  Then they made me wait about 10 minutes for it.  When it arrived, it was covered in whipped cream, without asking me (ew).  Even after scraping that off, the hot chocolate was sickeningly sweet.  Even the cookies served with it were inedible.  At least it only cost $6 for basically a tiny shot.  Brutal.

Also, I went back to L'Arte del Gelato, this time in Chelsea Market.  Trying to give it yet another shot, I ordered the Italian hot chocolate affogato with the chocolate gelato.  This type of hot chocolate float is basically my favorite type of food.  But it was just as disappointing as their chocolate gelato solo.  It had the misfortune of being less thick than Italian hot chocolate should be but still sufficiently thick as to make me a little sick.  Of course it was too sweet and not sufficiently chocolatey.  None of my friends who tried it would even have a second sip.

Bottom Line: Get your hot chocolate from Fresco or City Bakery (review pending).  Don't play around when it comes to something so serious.

L'Arte Del Gelato

L'Arte Del Gelato has the reputation for being one of the best gelaterias in New York.  This may well be the case, but I have always been unimpressed by their chocolate offerings.

I was walking by the other day with a friend, and she wanted some pumpkin gelato.  I decided to give the place another try, so we split a cup down the middle with pumpkin and dark chocolate sorbet.  My prior opinions were confirmed.

Can't complain about the appearance -- it certainly looks chocolatey

It's not that the sorbet is bad.  It's just that it faces an uphill battle of a super chocolatey appearance and a stellar reputation.  But when you bite in, it's merely good.  I've had the milk chocolate gelato version as well, and it's the same.  This sorbet not super sweet, which is good, but usually that would mean that the sugar is replaced by more chocolate.  Here, the taste is, as usual, not chocolatey enough.  It's as if they replaced the sugar from most sorbets with extra ice.

Bottom Line:  Good quality ingredients, but just not tasty enough.