Cool new ice cream

It sounds too good to be true -- a "fusion of Italian gelato, fresh frozen custard & hand-cranked home made ice cream," made fresh hourly. So what are they really serving at Silky Smooth, the new ice cream place in the Beverly Center?

Well, it's low in fat (10%), so it tastes more like ice milk than Ben & Jerry's or Häagen-Dazs. You can look on this as a positive (cleaner flavor) or a negative (not as rich).

Unlike the usual low-fat ice cream, though, it has a wonderful texture. One reason is that it's served at 18 degrees, much closer to the luscious melting point than to the rock-hard temperature of most ice cream. It's more like soft-serve, that is, except that soft-serve always has a fairly coarse texture, and Silky Smooth really is silky smooth. They say the secret is a special ice cream maker that produces ultra-small ice crystals, combined with the fact that the ice cream is made that day, so it never gets exposed to the cycle of thawing and refreezing that coarsens supermarket ice cream.

Another difference from most of today's ice cream places is that Silky Smooth stocks a limited range of flavors -- just vanilla, chocolate, coffee and strawberry when I was there this morning. In the '30s and '40s, soda fountains usually worked with no more than three or four ice cream flavors, which they varied by making sundaes, splits and shakes. Silky Smooth continues that tradition, except that it can also blend ice cream flavors if you want.

The best part, for some people, will be that all the soft drinks are old-school, made with cane sugar rather than the now universal high-fructose corn syrup. So they're all imported. Silky Smooth may be the only place in town that boasts of serving Coca-Cola bottled in Belgium.

-- Charles Perry

Comments

[matthew k.]

I know Ms. Alexa is a doctor and all, but if we only eat "anti-inflammatory" foods, we won't be very happy eaters.

[Alexa Fleckenstein M.D.]

Low-fat or not: Ice cream is unhealthy food. AND it is addictive, as we all know.It also is inflammatory and linked to diabetes, arthritis and cancer (among others).

I hate to spoil the fun but could we not promote healthy foods - like fresh fruit for dessert?

Worried about our health,

Alexa Fleckenstein M.D.
Author of "Health20 - Tapping into the Healing Power of Water", McGraw Hill 2007 (contains a whole chapter on anti-inflammatory foods).

[Babeth]

God I would love to try that ice-cream spot! Too bad I'm right now living far away, in South of France. But next time I'm going to visit my friend in CA I will make sure to stop by ;-)

[matteo]

for a similiar experience, visit Scoops on Heliotrope (and Melrose). Lowfat ice cream made fresh daily. Thanks for the tip though, I'll definitely try this place the next time I'm at the Beverly Center.