Over/Underrated Flavors

Well, since we are closed I can go ahead and write about whatever. Jenny and I used to play a game called over under for each flavor. Like if we thought the flavor was over or underrated no matter how much it sold. Here’s a list of the few from over the years.

Ube: OVER! Come on, let’s be real for a moment here and just say it: everyone likes it because of the color. I’m Filipino and I say it’s overrated. Besides have you ever eaten actual purple yam before? It doesn’t taste like that. The Ube you are eating in ice cream or bubble tea form is really food coloring and Taro. Go ahead and order some Taro bubble tea made with that taro powder and close your eyes. Tell me that’s not Ube! Towards the end of our run as APEM I started to add coconut extract to give it some backup dancers.

Hazelnut: Underrated. Man, please. You can’t get enough of the stuff no matter what. It’s the closest flavor to transcendence. I’ll go fisticuffs on the streets of Milan for some hazelnut gelato, though it should be said that some places skimp which is a terrible sacrilege.

Vanilla: If it ain’t the man himself, always going around creating problems then blaming it on other people. Underrated. Jokes aside, a good vanilla is as good as any flavor in the world. Bizarrely, Italian don’t know Vanilla like we Americans do. And the French… they can make a vanilla like Biden can rig an election. (You know that was a joke right?)

Oreo: Underrated. Well, it depends on how it is made. Those mediocre ice cream places barely put any cookies into the base. Blend that shit, blend it until it’s mixed like cement. Then go ahead and toss some in just cuz. An indulgent Oreo ice cream is the stuff of myths.

Strawberry: Overrated. I can’t… I just… can’t. I love strawberry shortcake and a delicious delicate strawberry cake, but in terms of frozen desserts it’s gotta be a sorbet. Strawberries are too watery and we used to even cook them until reduced to a thick sauce. Strawberries are magical, but they’re better simple with whipped cream and meringue or with proper shortcake.

Chocolate: Well that really depends. We have had some repugnant chocolate ice cream around America and also some in Italy. You swear some places only add cocoa powder yet charge you prime. Shhhiiiiiiitttt. If you want real chocolate frozen stuff then you gotta do some searching. Around the tristate area? Shhhhiiiiiiiittttt… I challenge you instead to making some delicious chocolate mousse at home. Get some chocolate over 70% cacao (the darker the better I say), a bit of espresso dust, vanilla extract, and unsweetened schlag and that’s all you need. Shhhhiiiiittt.

Butter Pecan: Underrated. How you gonna tell me that butter pecan is overrated. I mean maybe some places around the way make it wrong, but toast those pecans, sprinkle some salt, melt that butter until it’s nice and bubbly, maybe add some bourbon, a little vanilla extract, and mmmmmmm lemme tell you something: You can hang me Fort Worth style after eating a cup of delicious butter pecan.

Cookie Dough: Overrated. Sorry, Genna.

Taylor Ham: I don’t know we never made it. AND NEVER WILL!

Deep Pretzel: Underrated. You know this flavor with its chocolate gelato, chocolate covered pretzels, and bourbon caramel. I hated the idea of this flavor lol. But you guys were in control not me. My only job was to make it into something delicious. Here’s a side note: our code word for something going bad is “The Pretzel” in reference to the time that joker George W Bush was almost taken out by a pretzel or potato chip. “Hey Jen how’s the ricotta? PRETZEL! Shiiiiit we gotta get some more before Cheney gets here.”

Rainbow Cookie: DRAW. This flavor was a pleasant surprise to make. I love rainbow cookies, though I’m more of a sfogliatella guy, and it was a riff on Oreo. It’s good, but I’m not sure it’s that good.

Ricotta Strawberry: Underrated according to Jenny. Ricotta gelato with candied strawberries. We let the strawberries take a bath in sugar syrup for a day or two before using them. That process helps them to stay fresh, maybe even get better, and prevents those ice crystals from forming.

Alex’s PB Pie: Underrated. How could it be overrated when it has my name in it? But seriously though it’s a lot of peanut butter, pie crust, and chocolate ganache. America was built on these ingredients.

Amarena Amaretti: Underrated. Amarena cherries with amaretti cookies. First, we stopped making amaretti flavors because our supplier just stopped making them at some point during covid. And we could never find another place that makes them in the same manner that was cost effective. Any amaretti flavor is underrated in my opinion. I just love the crunch and taste and when you pair it with amarena cherries its totally legit. Italians are truly wizards when it comes to sweets. Italians and Austrians. The French…. “doing that iffy kinda sort of hand gesture” maybe.

Dannyboy: OVERRATED? Peanut butter Oreo. This kind of has to be overrated because it’s named after a customer who is a Rangers fan. The guy is cool, but the Rangers? Ugh. But for real though I used to call it the dirtiest flavor this side of the Mississippi. One weekend we totally ran out of milk and I wanted to make more of something/anything but at the end of our production cycle we can only make nut flavors. I told Jenny we will make Dannyboy but just go get some milk real quick at 7/11 down at Broad Street since it’s a dirty flavor anyway lol. I remember making that specific batch and being like yeah it’s dirty as hell, but of course good at the same time.

Black Sesame. Underrated. This flavor was always so good, but I feel like it only got play from a few customers. Maybe some people didn’t really like the idea of sesame or it was the color. People are visual, and I don’t think they realize that. In the first few years open and when I worked up front I remember people saying yeah I’ll take the red it’s cherry right? Naw, it’s October and that’s beet. Wait, did you say beet yo what kind of place is this? On the flip side never really liked making black sesame since it froze so quickly due to the fat content of the sesame, and it caked onto the barrel of the gelato machine which made it harder to clean.

Cheeky Bastard. Underrated. Lemon ice cream with shortbread and salted caramel. This is actually one of my favorite flavors. I grew up loving British desserts and also that specific kind of cheeky and dark British comedy from Matt Berry. The sight of him kicking that dog after being rejected is priceless. I always thought it tasted sophisticated even though the ingredients were just shortbread and caramel. It could have been in a scene of a Guy Ritchie movie where Boris the Blade was enjoying some Cheeky Bastard when Bullet Tooth Tony bursts in.

Eton Mess: DRAW. Vanilla ice cream with meringue and strawberry sauce. I’m undecided on this flavor since it’s quite good and I’ve always been unsettled it doesn’t taste more snobbish. That is of course because while the dessert Eton Mess isn’t, the school, Eton College, is the epitome of snobbery. I’d love to drive by and leave a flaming bag of dogshit at the front gate. I imagine a bunch of future crusty Brits with their striped pants and weird curved collars making goofy decisions that ruins the country while still being self assured they’re doing a good job. Did Boris Johnson go there because he seems like the type I’m referring to? He can sit around talking about ancient Athens or Rome then concoct some fantastical plan that makes things worse. It’s like those Ivory Tower morons at the big universities who look down on the rest of us with their lifted noses. There you go! We need an American Eton Mess called the Ivory Tower. Someone go out and invent a classical American dessert that is also a symbol of snivelry.

Doppio Espresso: Underrated. Anything with coffee in it is underrated. When I first moved to San Francisco I didn’t know where to start. I moved there to open a business and had to figure the place out. Well what better way than through coffee? I lived in North Beach the old Italian neighborhood and would walk all around the city to check the vibe and stopped in just about every coffee shop. By that time the third wave coffee or whatever they called it was in full swing, but not at its peak. There was Blue Bottle before Nestle, Four Barrel, Ritual, then Sightglass and Linea. God, that was all a big hipster scene lol. I’ll tell you what though… I had some damn good cookies at some of these places. And cookies I have yet to match after all these years. The coffee scene plateaued before everything else in food, but I still love the Devil’s Drink as I call it. Hell, I even bought my own espresso machine and drinking an espresso as I type this up. Forget all the fancy shit that can be said about coffee or espresso. I love it because I can’t drink jet fuel. I love the smell, the taste, the crema forming at the top, and the way it makes me feel. Well sort of, it may have induced a panic attack or two throughout the years. But it’s a wonderful addiction and in gelato form it must be as good as it can be compared to drinking a straight shot. So we tried to do our best with the doppio or double espresso flavors. To make something as its truest expression or damn near close is the spirit of Italian food in my eyes. I like to think we did that with this flavor. Once I get my gelato machine back up and running that will be my first batch. For now it’s one shot, two shot, three shot, four shot running down Grove Street in the rain.

Cardamom Coffee: Underrated. Well it is another coffee flavor, but it is underrated because of of its uniqueness. We never made it enough which is my fault. I made a lot of flavors because I love to travel and during covid that wasn’t possible. So I had to travel with the flavors. I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit I am a romantic. To go about the world in pursuit of beautiful things is as vital to my life as drawing a breath. If there weren’t wars raging it was my plan to travel from Portugal to China whether by foot, wheels, or train. Covid put pause to that, and Putin buried it. The world has bigger problems than my own plans, but that middle part of the world was my real goal. The Ancient Silk Road was always a draw to me since childhood. Partly it is the movement of food ingredients, but also religions and ideas. I have a tattoo on my right arm of the Buddha and The Great Khan. They symbolized not just being Asian, but the duality of human nature or at least civilized human nature. Growing up in Passaic in the 1990s there was always some underlying threat of violence, but you learned to thrive off it and my happiest moments come from then. The history of the steppe always seemed like an extreme version of that, and so it always called to me as a place to go. And when I taste food from that region it tastes so natural to me like it’s home. Cardamom Coffee was one of the first flavors we made that I thought “this right here is why I make gelato.”

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