Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Ample Hills Creamery! New York City and I are in love with Ample Hills Creamery.  Never before have I seen such creative, unique, and delicious flavors of ice cream as I have at this cozy ice cream parlor in Prospect Heights.  I have not, like the guys over at Serious Eats: NY, tried every single flavor .  Actually, this is a Sisyphus-ian task because Ample Hills continually invents new flavor combinations based on both seasonal ingredients and on - get this - pop culture and current events.  Anyway, I am wholeheartedly a fan of Ample Hills and I am very excited to check out their new Gowanus location in the spring!  Doubly exciting, they released the Ample Hills Creamery cookbook yesterday! You can get your standard ice cream flavors at Ample Hills, like chocolate, vanilla, cookies & cream, and mint chocolate chip.  Then, there's your best-selling Salted Crack Caramel: salted butter caramel ice cream b...

Brooklyn is poppin', you guys.  Not only is it my home borough, but it is the site of an ice cream parlor that is at the forefront of all foodies' to-eat lists.  Also, my coworker and dear friend's son works there.  Welcome to Ample Hills Creamery! Ample Hills Creamery, before you get R-rated, gets its name from Walt Whitman: "I too lived.  Brooklyn of ample hills was mine."  It is located in the beautiful neighborhood of Park Slope/Prospect Heights and attracts a diverse community of ice cream eaters: people of all backgrounds and ranging all ages.  I kid you not, a young family even brought a few-weeks old infant when we were there.  The store is colorful, cozy, and comfortable.  The flavors of ice cream, however, are far from just comfortable.  They are bold, I'm telling you. Ample Hills is famous for a couple of outlandish ice creams, including Maple Bacon and Salted Crack Caramel.  If you plan on visiting, consult their ...

Today, I fell in love. Mind you, not with a person (not today, at least), but rather with a place we encountered on a foodventure. In exploring the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, we happened upon the Brooklyn Farmacy.  When I stepped inside the front doors, I felt like I literally stepped inside a time machine and emerged in the 1920s. The Brooklyn Farmacy is a soda fountain shop that is housed in a restored apothecary/pharmacy from the good ol' days.  We were greeted by red-lipped, bob-coiffed waitresses behind the long bar.  The low bar was lined with fat brown-cushioned barstools.  The opposite wall was stacked with what looked like products from that era, but in reality were local Brooklyn-made products in cute, antique-style jars.  We spotted some familiar products like Rick's Picks (pickled veggies), McLure's potato chips, and Morris Kitchen Ginger Syrup. Behind the main dining area, there was a more private table surrounded by actual shelves...

Yep, that's a unicorn For everyone who's been living under a rock for the past year or so... There's this ice-cream-truck-turned-store called Big Gay Ice Cream near Alphabet City.  And their ice cream is to-die-for.  And their shop is really cute!  If you're into eclectic unicorn murals and rainbow colors.  But word of warning: the fact that their store is right next to Butter Lane Cupcakes spells trouble (i.e. sugar overload) for the wandering foodie. The first time we came here was to use up a Groupon deal.  It was a horrendously rainy fall day last year and I was kind of annoyed at having to trek all the way over a bunch of avenues to get to the shop.  And then, when we arrived, the guy said the air conditioner was broken so it might mess with the quality or solidity (is that a word?) of the ice cream.  No matter, ice cream is ice cream and I've been known to straight up drink the bottom of a bowl of of ice-cream-melt.  That time,...

They say there's always room for dessert... We tried out a dessert place on St. Mark's Place called Spot Dessert Bar tonight, thanks to a swell Living Social deal and a glowing recommendation from Serious Eats: New York. Their menu was pretty extensive, covering savory and sweet food.  I was also really impressed that their menu's photos reflected what the real food looked like, and not just stock images.  Everything looked and sounded incredible.  Our Living Social deal covered $20 worth of goodies, and with macarons on the menu, we obviously knew we had to try those.  Dessert was the Yuzu Eskimo and five macarons. The Yuzu Eskimo was a beautiful, artfully arranged plate with fanned out slices of ice cream on top of a bed of crushed Oreo cookies.  On the side was a raspberry foam and a strawberry.  It looked almost too pretty to eat!  I imagine really fancy restaurants serve dessert on par with Spot Dessert Bar's, at least on plating design...