Hello readers!
You might have noticed you didn’t get a new issue of GPG on Tuesday. Going forward, we’re shifting our editorial calendar and will just be publishing on Thursdays (bearing any breaking news we feel the need to weigh in on, of course). This week is Victoria, next week is a joint issue, then the week after is a Hayley issue, then another joint issue. As always, let us know if there’s anything you’re dying for us to write about.
xx
Victoria and Hayley
The 10 Best Ice Creams I Have Ever Had
10. Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Gelato, Circa 2005
Almost every year, my family goes on vacation to a resort in the Catskills (picture the vacation in Dirty Dancing, but less fun, no hot guys, everything is Italy-themed, and every other guest is from Central New Jersey). It’s called Villa Roma. An important part of the Villa Roma experience is eating ice cream, preferably every night and most afternoons. For a long time, the main ice cream atrractions were either soft serve from the diner-like restaurant, or Nestle Toll House chipwiches, which always ended with my mom lamenting their calorie count (yuck).
And then, inexplicably, they opened a gelato bar. Over time, the gelato bar transitioned into serving regular ice cream, but for a few golden years they had true, artisan-ish gelato. The chocolate-covered strawberry flavor was vanilla with chunks of real chocolate-covered strawberry. You could tell it was real — not just chocolate and strawberries — because the pieces of chocolate that has separated from the strawberry still had the tell-tale indentations from the flesh of the fruit. I am a strawberry person (it will appear again on this list), and this was a genius iteration.
9. Ben & Jerry’s Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night Snack, September 2012 to May 2014
I feel very differently about Ben & Jerry’s (supporter of Israeli apartheid) and Jimmy Fallon (you know why) than I did in 2012, but that doesn’t erase the joy this pint of ice cream brought me. Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night Snack, which was tied to his hosting role on Late Night, was a vanilla ice cream with caramel swirls and chocolate-covered potato chips. Sophomore year of college, my roommate Glenda and I would buy it all the time from the convenience door across the street from our dorm, then immediately eat it sitting next to each other on her bed, watching Dance Moms on her laptop. Those were the days.
Late Night snack was comparable to Stephen Colbert’s flavor, which they still make, Americone Dream. Americone Dream has chocolate-covered waffle cone pieces. But the waffle cone pieces get floppy and flavorless. They don’t crunch. The potato chip pieces never lost their salt and texture. They were such a spark of joy amid the sweetness of the ice cream. It was elite.
Unfortunately, when Jimmy was promoted to The Tonight Show in 2014, they phased out this flavor and replaced it with “The Tonight Dough,” which is an absolute nightmare. The last time I had Late Night Snack was in May 2014, and I’ll be chasing that rush forever.
8. Thomas Sweet’s Coffee, Cookies & Cream, May 2014
There’s an amazing ice cream shop called Thomas Sweet, which has four stores in New Jersey and one right by my college in DC. They also sell excellent fudge. I went to T Sweet’s many times, and recall many flavors fondly, but one time the ice cream was better than all others.
Picture it: May 2014. I am very close to graduating from college. I am writing a final paper about sitcoms using jokes to promote progressive values. I keep getting distracted by old episodes of Who’s The Boss on Youtube. Some of my friends text me asking if I want to go to T Sweet’s with them. I do, I do, I do, but I need to finish this so I can spend a week crying and drinking before graduating.
Half an hour later, my friend Saumya finds me in the study room (the good one, with free printing and lots of power strips), and presents me with a container of T Sweet’s coffee, cookies & cream — two already perfect flavors combined in one beautiful package. I am overjoyed. It is so kind. It is so delicious. I finish the paper, buoyed by coffee flavor and oreo crunch. For the rest of my life, I lament that this isn’t a standard ice cream flavor. Its brilliance lives in my heart forever.
7. Mochi Green Tea Ice Cream, June 2013 to Present
In college, my friend Steven introduced me to the joys of mochi — the chewy, Japanese rice cake — during trips to Pinkberry. Do they still have Pinkberries? I’m glad big fro-yo has mostly been defeated. Anyway, in the summer of 2013 Steven found out that Trader Joe’s carries mochi ice cream: Balls of ice cream surrounded by mochi. We had to try it. During an absurdly hot June day, we walked 1.2 miles to get it (why didn’t we take the bus??). It was so hot that, after making our singular purchases, we just sat outside Trader Joe’s and dug into our boxes, knowing the ice cream would melt before we made it home. It was heaven. I still get a box of the green tea flavor every time I hit up Trader Joe’s and slowly eat the six balls over the course of a few weeks.
6. Jacques Torres Pistachio, Circa 2011
Jacques Torres is now the French guy who flirts with Nicole Byer on Nailed It, but he is also a fancy French man who knows what he’s doing with chocolate. One of my best friends in high school, Jay, lived by his first store, and it was always a treat to go and get hot chocolate (Jay would also frequently make Jacques’s chocolate-covered cereal, which was addictively good). Eventually, they opened an ice cream store next to the regular chocolate store.
In general my favorite ice cream flavor is pistachio, so I got pistachio from Jacques. But this was no typical pistachio: The nuts were covered in dark chocolate! Holy shit. What a genius. There also used to be a Jacques store just above Soho, and sometimes I would stop and get ice cream before class, but they never had the pistachio again. Missing you, king.
5. Jacque Torres Ice Cream Sandwiches, June 2016 to December 2017
So Jacques also has amazing chocolate chip cookies, and when I worked in 30 Rock for 18 months, I would often treat myself to a cookie from the Jacques store on the concourse. Then one day I noticed a freezer in the corner of the store, which used the incredible, giant cookies to make ice cream sandwiches. When I was having a shitty day — and I was working late shifts at a new organization during the early days of the Trump administration, so there were a lot of them — this was the ultimate treat. Picture me sitting on the plaza, surrounded by tourists, eating an ice cream sandwich. I almost felt like Liz Lemon, tbh. This location is also tragically closed now.
4. Spumoni Gardens Spumoni, May 14, 2021
There is a famous pizza place by my house called Spumoni Gardens, which is known for their sicilian pizza and their spumoni ice cream. I remember going semi-frequently as a kid in groups with other kids and their moms. As an adult, my family sometimes got takeout pizza from there, but never the ice cream. I lost my connection to the spumoni.
Then my friend Danielle found out about the legend of Spumoni Gardens and it became our thing — one day we would go to Spumoni Gardens together and get pizza and ice cream. Unfortunately, she moved back to the state right before the pandemic, delaying our ability to make our longed for pilgrimage.
But last week, our mutual friend came to visit, and we brought her with us to the garden of spumoni. First we had pizza — delicious — and then we had ice cream. It was perfection. The texture was dense in a way that reminded me almost of an Italian ice, but still with the creaminess of ice cream. The pistachio was deeply nutty. The chocolate was rich. The vanilla was the perfect balance.
My family is moving away from the neighborhood in a few weeks, and I’m trying to schedule in as much spumoni as possible before we go.
3. Jeni’s Ice Cream x Dolly Parton Strawberry Pretzel Pie, April 2021
I had my first taste of Jeni’s in February 2020, when I was going through a bad time and my friend Sharada sent a box (the time I was going through only got worse, though who could have known). Every flavor was amazing. I have had many flavors since then, and I easily could have just done a list of Jeni’s flavors, but I kept it to one, because this one was special.
Strawberry pretzel pie is a cream cheese ice cream with chunks of pretzel and a strawberry jam. I’ve realized — thanks to Jeni’s — that an ice cream with a fruit swirl is probably my favorite flavor and texture profile. But this one has the cream cheese flavor, combined with the saltiness of the pretzels. It’s just so good.
The other thing that sent this flavor to the top is that I had to fight for it. The SPP release, thanks to Dolly’s star power, crashed the Jeni’s website. It took me an hour of refreshing to secure my pint. But secure it I did. Victory has literally never tasted so sweet.
2. Munchies from Ample Hills, March 2019
You might remember from number 9 that I have been chasing the joy of a potato chip ice cream ever since Ben & Jerry & Jimmy betrayed me. On my best friend Karina’s birthday, we went to Ample Hills after a super delicious brunch. I scowered the flavors, and then I saw it: Munchies. It’s a pretzel-infused ice cream with Ritz crackers, potato chips, pretzels and crushed M&M’s. I got it in a cone, and privately worried that all those flavors might be too much.
But reader, the combo is perfect. It was exactly the salty, chocolatey heaven I had been searching for. In fact, my Instagram profile picture is of me eating this ice cream, and I can’t change it because just to look at it makes me happy. For my 2019 birthday, I also went to AH and got the same flavor. Last summer, I found AH did birthday cakes and got it made into a cake. There was a hurricane that day, so I mildly risked my life to get the cake. Worth it.
1. A Twist Cone With Rainbow Sprinkles, 1995 to Present
When I was a kid, I always wanted my ice cream in a cone. It’s just better! And every cone became a challenge — eat this before it drips all over your hand. I remember getting Carvel with my grandma and her making them put my cone in a cup so I wouldn’t get it all over her car. Cones were forbidden because they were messy, which just made me want them more.
As an adult, I feel very powerful when I get an ice cream cone and eat it all before it dribbles on my hand, even though I mastered that skill by the age of 8. Adulthood is always getting yourself a cone because you can. I assume if I have kids I will have to stop until they are 7 or 8 and can eat a cone without getting it all over themselves. The circle of life.
The best soft serve order is twist — half chocolate and half vanilla — with rainbow sprinkles. It’s what I get at a baseball game when I get a helmet cup (the one time I don’t prefer a cone). Licking off those rainbow sprinkles is absolute heaven. Every time I see or hear an ice cream truck, I consider going to get one. It is not the most complicated or sophisticated item on this list, which is what makes it the best. Ice cream is for kids. The best ones remind us of that kids. Of asking my dad if I can please please please have ice cream for the truck. Of going to bogo sundae night at Carvel. Of getting a cone while waiting for my brothers to finish baseball practice. It’s aesthetically pleasing, perfectly nostalgic, and still delicious. Thank you, twist cone with rainbow sprinkles.
*Honorable mentions to the pistachio ice from The Lemon Ice King Of Corona, which does not qualify since it is not ice cream, and the earl grey ice cream at Van Leeuwun, which you can now get at Target. Life is good. Special shout out to Eimile for inspiring this list. *