Yesterday, we found the coolest place:
That’s coconut soft-serve, above, and it was absolutely fabulous!
Nestled into the Hell’s Kitchen area, Kyotofu is a modern Japanese restaurant and dessert bar with exquisitely-presented food. Although the establishment isn’t vegetarian, some of its offerings are completely vegan, such as two seasonally-rotating flavors of soft-serve ice cream.
We were lucky enough to go on a day when the flavors were coconut and Thai chili chocolate.
Yes, Thai chili chocolate.
The first spoonful simply tasted like chocolate (really delicious chocolate). But watch out!
It has quite a kick, so you’d better be prepared with water. Above is one of Kyotofu’s gorgeous sundaes: fresh berries, chocolate cookie crumbles, green tea mochi, and the most delectable caramel sauce I have ever tasted. (I want to try and recreate the caramel—which has a special ingredient—as soon as I get back to Texas.)
After snack, we explored The Westerly Market. Jessica is my health-food-shopping partner in crime, and I have to take advantage… because when S comes he won’t want to do any of this!
If only I lived closer, I would’ve taken home one of their many raw pies or cakes: Tiramisu, Strawberry Cheesecake, Carrot Cake, Chocolate Cream Pie…
Instead, I went with something more portable: chocolate!
(We also explored a few other shops, including a fun little four-story place called “Lee’s Art Shop,” which sold gifts, lights, art supplies, and toys.)
Dinner was at Josies, a charming vegetarian-friendly restaurant on the Upper West Side:
I was happy to find that the vegan lentil loaf I’d so loved on my previous visit hadn’t changed at all. The loaf features organic lentils, mushroom, sweet potato, and tahini, and it was just as flavorful, soft, and comforting as I remembered from last summer.
What’s the weirdest ice cream flavor you’ve ever seen?
There’s a gelato place near me that sells Black Pepper, as well as Violet and Chocolate Jalapeño. And in California, they have a summer garlic festival with garlic ice cream! Awhile back, someone sent me a link to the top 100 weirdest ice cream flavors ever, which listed things like Squid Ink, Chicken Wing, and Soy Sauce Ice Cream! Oh, and Viagra ice cream. 😕
Link of the Day:
YUM! Please please please go to Lula’s next 🙂 I’m going to NYC in a few weeks, and I’m already dying of anticipation!
The idea of garlic ice cream isn’t that foreign to me because the area I grew up in also had a garlic festival (http://www.dbgarlicfest.com/) with garlic ice cream, though I never actually tried it!
I just wanted to comment on the vegan lentil loaf…It sounded so delicious that I had to find some kind of knock-off recipe, so after a bit of googling, I found a recipe that has all the elements you mentioned that yours had, Katie. (Although it does feature sundried tomatoes, I’d imagine you could probably omit them if you wanted something closer to what you had.) Here’s the link: http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2012/01/10/sundried-tomato-red-lentil-loaf/
Oh my goodness! Those are some interesting flavors for ice cream… Haha I think I’ll just stick to basic chocolate or vanilla 😉 However, the coconut one sounds delicious!
Gnosis Chocolate is so so delicious! I’m quite jealous of the discounted price…it’s so expensive around here!
Your eats look amazing!
I must go to NYC to try all of these amazing vegan foods.
Coconut soft serve sounds spot on for what I’m craving 🙂
Those sound AMAZING!! I love coconut <3 truly love it….. and chocolate with a hit of chili- mmmmm!
Okay, hold on a second. VIAGRA ice cream? Was is like “spiked” or something?? I’m just trying to think this concept through…wait, WHAT?!?!
HAHA. Lol. Now THAT is creative. Thanks for sharing Katie! 😀
xoxo
Cheri
There’s a place near my campus that makes pie and cobbler ice creams – they put an entire pie/cobbler in each flavor! It is SO good!
I had Mexican Chocolate ice cream at an ice cream stand in Talkeetna, Alaska. It was definitely spicy!
I like a large variety of ice cream to choose from (think: Coldstone), and this place had Blueberry and Mexican Chocolate as the flavors for the day. So that’s why I was forced to try it.
Josie’s is one of my go-to spots! Love it!
Curry ice cream! 🙂
Any chance you got the recipe for that vegan lentil loaf? Sounds divine. (Or if not, can you give me an idea, such as 50% Shiitakes, 30% lentils, etc?) You’re the best, Katie!
It isn’t weird to me, just different, at a sushi restaurant we had ginger ice cream with bits of ginger through it. It was so good and different.
Ginger soft serve ice cream with bits of candied ginger and chocolate sauce.
There is this place here in Austin called Lick that sells organic ice creams. They have the best flavors like caramelized carrots and tarragon or cilantro mint. They always have two vegan, coconut milk flavors too. The flavors are currently spicy coconut peanut and peanut, coconut, chocolate swirl. It has your (and my) name written all over it.