The current issue
Neighborhood Map
Bay Ridge
  • Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights
Brooklyn Heights
  • Downtown, DUMBO
Carroll Gardens
  • Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Boerum Hill
Fort Greene
  • Clinton Hill, Crown Heights
North Brooklyn
  • Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick
Park Slope
  • Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights
GO Brooklyn
Dining Guide
Where to GO
Events calendar
Classifieds
The Brooklyn Wire
Not Just Nets
Police Blotter
Perspective
Parenting
Politics
Transit
Podcasts
Brooklyn Cyclones
Merchant news
About The Paper
RSS Feeds
Avalon Fort Greene

The best thing we ate this week: Jacques Torres is making ice cream!

By Gersh Kuntzman
The Brooklyn Paper
Why is Jacques Torres smiling? Because he's created a line of ice creams that are better than anything anyone else is making.

Tools

Print this story
digg
del.icio.us

He conquered the world of high-end truffles and bon-bons. Then he made us look forward to winter with his hot chocolate. When he started baking, his kitchen quickly created the best chocolate chip cookies and brownies in the city.

Now, Jacques Torres is making ice cream.

Game over.

The Willy Wonka of Water Street has done it again (of course), creating a line of 13 ice creams and sorbets that are so rich, so thick, so luxurious that they could be icing.

The quality comes from the ingredients: real chocolate (not cocoa powder), real vanilla, juicy raspberries, homemade caramel, and even house-made peanut butter. (He roasts his own nuts, this guy!)

The Brooklyn Paper got a preview taste last week from Torres’s right hand man, Ken Goto, and through the smears on our looseleaf pages, we were able to decipher these tasting notes:

• Chocolate: This is the best thing we’ve ever tasted. One spoonful fills the mouth completely, feeling like melted chocolate instead of melted ice cream. The flavor also forms the base for Torres’s chocolate banana and his “Wicked,” a cinnamon and spice version that may be the standout of the trio of chocolates, even if you don’t like spiced chocolates.

• Vanilla: There’s a reason why most plain vanillas are plain vanilla in taste — fake vanilla flavoring instead of real beans. But in Torres’s version, you can taste the difference. The vanilla works even better in the caramel swirl variety, which tastes like a sundae in a cup.

• Peanut butter: As if it wasn’t rich enough, Torres ladles in plenty of chocolate chips. This is why he is a genius.

• Love Bug: This combination of white chocolate and lime is the only miss in the bunch. It tasted a bit like cheesecake. If you want that, head to Junior’s.

All Car Rent-A-Car

• Raspberry sorbet: Our art director, who eats ice cream every day, emitted an audible moan when she tasted this flavor.

• Banana rum sorbet: This is a daiquri in a cup. That’s a good thing.

Jacques Torres’s ice cream shop [Water Street between Main and Dock streets in DUMBO, no phone yet] opens for business on Saturday, May 30.

©2009 The Brooklyn Paper

←Cleaning the Gowanus: Other big news from the Gowanus Canal hearing
→Mean Streets: Vander-rific! Avenue to be closed to cars in June

Reader Feedback

Enter your comment below

By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:

You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.

First name
Last name
Your neighborhood
Email address
Daytime phone

Your letter must be signed and include all of the information requested above. (Only your name and neighborhood are published with the letter.) Letters should be as brief as possible; while they may discuss any topic of interest to our readers, priority will be given to letters that relate to stories covered by The Brooklyn Paper.

Letters will be edited at the sole discretion of the editor, may be published in whole or part in any media, and upon publication become the property of The Brooklyn Paper. The earlier in the week you send your letter, the better.