With Record Temperatures, Ice Cream Will Hit The Spot
By Dolores Quintana
This Labor Day Weekend is going to be an unseasonable scorcher, so why not cool down with some of the finest ice cream shops in Venice before heading to the beach?
There are four really wonderful ice cream shops in Venice that we would like to point out to help you stay frosty while the Southland bakes this week. You don’t even have to wait until the weekend to start checking them out.
Wanderlust Creamery is located at 609 Lincoln Blvd and bills itself as artisanal ice cream inspired by travel. They have two menus, signature and seasonal. The signature menu has Sticky Rice + Mango, which is vegan, Kinder, Honey Lavender, Ube Malted Crunch®, Abuelita Malted Crunch, Japanese Neapolitan®, Wanderlust Vanilla, Vietnamese Rocky Road™, Earl Grey, Pandan Tres Leches™, Passionfruit Cacao Ⓥ, Gianduja Ⓥ, Smoky Road and Hokey Pokey.
Their seasonal flavors are Amalfi Pear Torte, Preserved Lemon + Candied Pistachio, Cherimoya, Pa Amb Xocolata, Chè Thái, vegan, Lilikoi Li Hing Pineapple, vegan. You can learn more about the seasonal flavors at their Flavor Blog.
Turn Dough is located at 1425 Ocean Front Walk and sells chimney cones and milkshakes for added chills. Their website describes their cones and ice cream and says, “We bring you the freshest and most unique chimney cake experience in Los Angeles and Venice Beach. Our cones and ice cream are handcrafted daily from scratch. We make sure our vanilla ice cream and the dough we make are as fresh as possible for your tasting desires. Chimney Cakes are very popular in Europe, specifically in Prague. We bring you a taste of Europe to Los Angeles on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and on the Venice Beach Board Walk.”
Their ice cream is “ Italian Style Gelato Vanilla Bean (soft serve) and it’s made fresh daily.” and is “made with Grass-Fed Cattle Dairy Milk with no artificial sweeteners or corn syrups. We use natural Vanilla Beans.”
The shop has about 18 different types of cones built with their gelato and different kinds of toppings in the Chimney cones. They have options like Birthday Cake which is made with Nutella, Ice Cream, Oreos, Giant S’more, Rainbow Sprinkles, Chocolate Sauce and Raspberry Sauce or Caramello Toffifay which is made with Dulce de Leche sauce, Ice Cream, Toffifays, Graham Crackers, Caramel Sauce, Sea Salt Caramel Sauce and the deluxe Gold’n Kiss which is made with Nutella, Ice Cream, 24K Edible Gold, Ferrero Rocher.
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is located at 540 Rose Ave and has all of the simple and creative ice cream flavors in freshly made waffle cones or cups that you could desire.
Jeni’s website describes their philosophy by saying, “We build ice creams completely from scratch using a unique recipe honed and perfected over more than 20 years by our founder, Jeni Britton. Our ice creams have a uniquely smooth texture and buttercream body, with bright flavor and clean finish. We’re here to set new standards for ice cream classics and to create our own. At Jeni’s, you’ll find flavors inspired by our curiosities—art, history, pop culture, and beyond—that simply don’t exist anywhere else.”
The shop has a simply mind-boggling array of rich ice cream flavors that you can buy at a scoop shop or have delivered to your home. Flavors like Salty Caramel, fire-toasted sugar with sea salt, vanilla, and grass-grazed milk, Darkest Chocolate, packed with Fair Trade cocoa and not much else, Brambleberry Crisp, Brown Butter Almond Brittle, Gooey Butter Cake, Salted Peanut Butter with Chocolate Flecks, Salty Caramel with perennial favorite Wedding Cake returning for this season.
Finally Salt & Straw which is located at 1357 Abbot Kinney Boulevard. Their story is told on their website which says, “For years, Kim Malek was dreaming about the creation of a community gathering place. One where you could run into neighbors, spend time with family, or treat yourself. A great neighborhood place. The answer was clearly an ice cream shop. Enter Tyler, her cousin who wanted in. But there was a catch: Neither had ever made ice cream before. Luckily, Tyler wasn’t afraid of his rookie status. He spent $16 on four used ice cream makers and got to work, spending hours endlessly testing flavor ideas in his own personal Wonka-verse (a.k.a., Kim’s basement). Meanwhile, Kim cashed in her savings and bought a cart. And then the two of them turned to their community, asking friends—chefs, chocolatiers, brewers and farmers—for advice, finding inspiration everywhere they looked. And that’s how Salt & Straw came to be. Our ice cream gives you a moment of happiness and connection to the community around you. If you ever stop believing in magic, eat some ice cream.”
Currently, their menu is called The Veggies You Crave and features flavors such as Spinach Cake w/ Chocolate Tahini Fudge, Spinach, cake, and chocolate. Inspired by a classic Turkish dessert, spinach is baked into a fluffy golden-green cake slathered with chocolate frosting, then crumbled into a vanilla ice cream with smears of housemade tahini fudge and Charred Corn Curd, Cotija & Tajin. As an ode to Mexican street corn, Elote, torched corn is blended into curd and ribboned through a housemade mayo ice cream with a touch of lime & tajin, topped with crumbles of cotija cheese.
What Salt & Straw truly excels at is making ice cream with flavors that most people would not expect would make good ice cream, including using savory items to flavor the ice cream. They really go against the grain and have come up with some truly stellar combinations in the past, so if you have a more adventurous ice cream palate, this is the place for you.
