We kind of have a serious crush on the boys at Ice & Vice, because after all, the stomach is the way to the heart. We checked in with Ken Lo (who partners in business with Paul Kim) to see how this innovative cream team has grown in the past year. They are nominated for one of the Vendy Awards—known as the Oscars of Street Food. The Awards will be determined on September 13th beginning at 12:30 p.m. on Governor’s Island (www.VendyAwards.StreetVendor.org). The dynamite duo has a few collaborations in the works, and is even in the early stages of getting their own brick and mortar stone. We can’t wait to be able to grab scoops of Basic B, Milk Money $$$, Bridezilla, Farmer Boy, and Tea Dance in a store in the near future. BORO: The names of your ice creams are almost as delicious as the desserts themselves. How do you come up with some of these names? ICE & VICE: Haha, we have a sense of humor! It also helps that we’re rather crude! Most of the time it’s a stream of consciousness type of process. We throw out a lot of words and expressions during our slow hours at the markets, and sometimes certain words or expressions click or we laugh out loud when we hear them. When those moments happen we know we have a winner. BORO: You recently teamed up with a local coffee shop… tell us about that. ICE & VICE: Yes! We are currently partnered with Astoria Coffee (on 30th St. and 30th Ave. in Astoria), which just opened on August 18th. They first discovered us at the Astoria Flea. They soon proposed to have their shop carry our ice cream and also to use our ice cream for their affogatos. We ended up working out an affogato menu with them. The relationship has really been great. They love our ice cream and we love their coffee! BORO: Can you tell us about your collaboration with the gals from Frittering Away? ICE & VICE: We love Frittering Away! We’re vendor besties of course! Our booths are right next to each other at LIC Flea, so you knew something was bound to happen. We love their lemonade, and wanted to experiment with it. During the slow hours, we would pair different flavors of our ice cream with their lemonade. We eventually stumbled on a couple of combinations that worked. We settled on two combinations: 1.) Our ‘The Basic B’ flavor--Mexican vanilla and black lava salt ice cream--paired with their strawberry basil lemonade (plus seltzer), and 2.) Our cardamom ice cream paired with their apricot ginger lemonade (with seltzer). The floats were such a hit, we decided to keep them on our permanent menu. BORO: What are your most popular flavors? ICE & VICE: Without question, our most popular flavor is ‘Milk Money’ (toasted milk ice cream with a sea salt ganache swirl). There’s something about sea salted chocolate that drives people crazy. Another popular flavor is ‘Bridezilla’ (elderflower ice cream with a strawberry champagne jam). We really think it’s because of the name—and maybe the champagne… BORO: Is there a flavor that you have retired that you wish had been better received? ICE & VICE: We would never put one of our children up for adoption… but sadly, yes, we have, haha. Our flavor ‘Orange is the New Black’ is actually one of our personal favorites. We loved the combination of fruit and nuttiness, something that definitely should be plated. It even generated a bit of blogger and social media buzz because of its nod to Kaufman Studios. For whatever reason, with the exception of a few fans, the flavor was lost on the general public. Some people have even suggested it reminded them of sushi… Suffice to say, we probably won’t be bringing this one back, haha. BORO: What can we expect now from Ice & Vice? Ice & Vice: We’re going to take over NYC! If all goes well, we’ll have a scoop shop. We really want to have an impact on the ice cream scene and really introduce a different approach. We do crazy flavors for adults, and we want to keep that going, and hopefully take it even further. But one thing’s for sure—people should expect big things from us. LIC Flea & Food Weekends 10am - 6pm 46th Ave. and 5th St. Long Island City, NY 11101 10 | BOROMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER 2014 FOOD & DRINK I Scream You Scream www.iceandvice.com
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