Another award to add to the city's shelf: According to the Times, Manhattan is most likely the home of America's most expensive ice cream. At their two locations, Grom serves a "small" cup of their artisanal gelato for $5.25, already up $.50 since they opened in 2007. (A sales rep says their small is "110-115 grams," which means a pound would be around $25, not $150 as the Gray Lady claims.) Their prices seem to be the high end of standard these days, as handmade, organic, horomone-free, sustainable, etc. ice cream becomes more and more popular. But the Times asks an important question, "Is there any good reason for ice cream—basically milk, sugar and eggs—to cost more per ounce than wild Atlantic smoked salmon or prime rib-eye?"
Grom explains that their ingredients come from small farmers and the "strawberries for our granita are grown only on 12 hectares in the entire earth," and though that may impress the green-trend crowd, others aren't buying it. Patricia Samson, an owner of ice cream shop Delicieuse in Redondo Beach (near where Grom plans to open another shop) hand makes all of her own ice cream, but charges just $2.95. "Milk and sugar are cheap," she said. But as Ben Van Leeuwen of Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream points out, image is everything. "The Victorian look of our Web site, the botanical drawings and especially the color of our trucks seemed to make a huge difference." Sure, but how does it taste?
The Times put some strawberry ice creams of various pedigrees to the test, and it turns out that the "artisanal" and "handmade" marketing ploys don't always win out when it comes to taste. Haagen-Dazs' Five strawberry ice cream was the "clear winner," while Blue Marble's had "not enough strawberry flavor" and Adirondack Creamery's was the "least popular." Starbucks' apparently had a "strange aftertaste." We can't wait for "everyman" ice cream to make a comeback. Bring on the Baskin Robbins Cotton Candy!
