Salt & Straw Ice Cream

In 2017, something exciting happened in San Francisco.  A new ice cream shop came to town.  Not that San Francisco has a shortage of great ice cream, ranging from the always busy Bi-Rite, to daring flavors at Humphrey Slocombe, to liquid nitrogen darling Smitten Ice Cream, to my personal favs Mitchell's, Mr. & Mrs. Miscellaneous, and the now shuttered Shakedown ... Yes, San Francisco has plenty of great ice cream.  But a new place was coming, and, wow, it was surrounded by hype.

Salt & Straw was coming to town.  Those who had discovered it in other cities along the West Coast (mostly, Portland) raved about it.  I remember when I was in the LA area once a year or so before someone telling me I *had* to go there.  I remembered it due to the sorta odd name (which, isn't really odd, it turns out, it refers to the basics of old school ice cream making, where you use rock salt to lower the freezing point of water, and store ice cream in insulating straw).  Salt & Straw was known for their very interesting flavors. 

"We’re inspired by interesting ingredients. A local creamery’s habanero-laced goat cheese. Herbaceous and citrusy liqueur from a craft distillery. Wild nettles foraged  in Washington. Our Grandma Malek’s famous almond brittle. Every ingredient has a story; we’re trying to find the most intriguing angle."

Salt & Straw really means it when they say they are inspired by interesting ingredients.  The flavor line up at Salt & Straw is constantly changing, with new flavors monthly.  Yes, they have some classics that remain in all scoop shops, but otherwise, they are constantly trying out crazy combinations, some exclusive to particular locations.  The flavors always sound bold, unique, and, well, not things you'd normally think of putting into ice cream, like Duck Cracking with Cherry Preserves.  Ras el Hanout & Pickled Rose Petal Jam.  Roasted Beets & Humboldt Fog.  Some, I'm sure, are more successful than others.  Their tame, everyday flavors include Arbequina Olive Oil and Pear & Blue Cheese.

All the ice cream made by Salt & Straw is super premium, meaning, made with as high percent butterfat as they can get into it (using cream from Scott Brothers Dairy).  Of course they make all their own candies, caramels, etc that go into the pints, unless of course they are part of one of their many collaboration projects with local artisan bakeshops and the like.  The price is higher than many other brands, but, the quality and exclusiveness commands it.

Fillmore Storefront.

The first location in SF was on Fillmore Street, right in a prime shopping and strolling area.  And, yup, they were quite successful, now with multiple SF locations, including another in Hayes Valley.

If you don't want to visit a shop though, they deliver all over the city on every major food delivery platform, and ship nationwide.

Side note: Want some ice cream delivered? For free?  Here are some codes for free money!

• Door Dash ($15 off, $5 each of your first 3 orders) [ Delivery or pickup ]
• Caviar ($20 off, $10 off your first 2 orders) [ Delivery or pickup ]
• Ritual ($6 off) [ Pickup only ]
• Delivery.com ($10 off) [ Delivery or pickup ]
• Grub Hub ($10 off) [ Delivery or pickup ]
• Seamless ($10 off) [ Delivery or pickup ]
• Nextdish: ($10 off your first order) [ Delivery only ]
• Uber Eats ($20 off - use code eats-lejw5 at checkout) [ Pickup or delivery ]
  

My first visit was to the Fillmore St location, but I've since ordered pints for delivery.

Pints.

Because the flavors change every few weeks, Salt & Straw doesn't develop specific labels for any pints, rather, all pints come hand labelled, regardless if you get them at a shop, at a grocery store, or shipped nationwide.  The labels add a small batch, limited, exclusive feel to the ice cream.

Logo.

Each pint has the Salt & Straw logo on top, proudly proclaiming their Portland heritage.

Regular Flavors

Each Salt & Straw location has about a dozen standard flavors, always including 1-2 vegan options, and their signature flavors.  These are generally consistent across locations, but there are a few variations.

I've tried several from this lineup, and, wow, I see why they are fixtures on the menu.

Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons.

"Our signature flavor combines Guatemalan Fleur de Sel ice cream with ribbons of housemade, hand-burned caramel for a positively obsession-worthy blend of salty and sweet. We created this ice cream with Mark Bitterman, the ‘selmelier’ behind The Meadow, a family of world renowned salt shops in Portland and New York. He literally wrote the book on the subject—James Beard Award-winning cookbook Salted—and has aided many of our saltier ice cream experiments since 2011."

Oh, wow.

I saw "sea salt" and "caramel" in the name, and thought, "yup, another trendy salted caramel product".  I'm glad I didn't pay much attention to the full description, because the result is that I went in expecting simple vanilla ice cream with a caramel swirl that I'd inevitably review as "I didn't really detect the promised salt", like, well, most salted caramel products.

But not this.  Um, no.  This was, indeed, as named, "Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons".  The base ice cream is not vanilla.  It is salt.  Yes, salt ice cream.  It is a beautiful flavor, really quite unlike anything I've had before (including the salt ice cream from Alden & Harlow that wasn't remarkable).  Smooth, creamy, premium ice cream, amazing salt flavor.

And then there are the caramel ribbons.  Now, these ... these are just too sweet for me.  But the consistency is perfect, gooey in just the right way.  A little of the caramel was wonderful with the salt flavored base, but, the distribution was just a bit too high for me, resulting in a very salty product.

Still, wow, what a flavor.

****.

Chocolate Gooey Brownie.

"This one hits the spot when those extra-urgent chocolate desires kick in. An indulgent, almost hot-chocolatey chocolate ice cream lays the foundation for hearty chunks of chewy chocolate brownies made with homemade marshmallow fluff to keep them extra soft—even when frozen in ice cream. It’s the ultimate comfort food."

Next I went chocolately, opting for the very tempting sounding chocolate gooey brownie.

This was the least interesting of the ice creams I tried (even once I dug away from the freezer burn on top, doh!).

The chocolate base wasn't really indulgent at all, it was just mild milk chocolate, not nearly as intense as I wanted.  The brownies were well distributed throughout, good size chunks, and I did appreciate that they were soft and not icy, but there wasn't anything particularly special about them.

I just found this flavor boring and disappointing, and tried it several times, thinking I just wasn't in "the mood" originally, but, it never really delivered on what I was looking for.

***.

Collaborations

Salt & Straw is constantly doing collaborations with other merchants.  Sometimes they'll choose a bakery, and do flavors inspired by the signature cakes, and of course have chunks of cake from the inspiration bakery in them.   Other times it is a particular chef, and they team up to create unique flavors.  In the summer, it might be a farmer they pair with to create vegetable forward flavors.  Every month, a new theme or partnership, and more exciting flavors to explore (I'm still sad I missed out on the Mushroom Muddy Buddies made with a mix of different wild mushrooms!).

The Cookie Monster.

“Cookie and cream with 9 dips of cholttate and 6 dips of lavendr all over with cholttate eyes with whiped cream hair.” -by Corion from Ms. Coombs Class, Dr. William L Cobb Elementary

This flavor was done as part of a collaboration with local schools to design flavors, and the winners had their flavors actually made into ice cream.  This one was dubbed "The Cookie Monster"

The translation into a flavor by Salt & Straw was a blue colored ice cream (vanilla), with chunks of fudge and Oreo cookies.  This photo really didn't come out well, as it was fairly brilliant blue.

I'm not sure if it was my mind playing tricks on me, but I really, really thought the ice cream was frosting flavored.  It was super creamy, and tasted exactly like the blue frosting on a Carvel cake.  Hence, my concern that it was just my brain playing tricks on me.  It tasted ... blue!  Sweet and blue, and really quite enjoyable.  That couldn't be just vanilla ... could it?

I'm never one for Oreo or cookies and cream inspired things, as I generally don't care for the texture, but this didn't bother me too much.  I liked the fudge chunks more, and thought the chocolate was a nice compliment to the sweeter ice cream.  The chocolate here was more successful than in the brownies in the Chocolate Gooey Brownie pint.  Clearly quality chocolate.

Overall, I really did like this, and would happily have more.  Thank you, to this random elementary school kid for the inspiration.

****.

The Spooktacular Series: October 2018.

In October, the flavors all tend to take on a Halloween slant.  There is one with real bugs, one with blood pudding, and one loaded with candy. You know, all your typical Halloween features.   But I was drawn in by the "Essence of Ghost", even though the description didn't tell me anything about what it actually was.

 

Essence of Ghost (October Special):

"Do the wisps of ghouls spooking a foggy graveyard give you the chills? This frigid sherbet might just bring you back to that memorable moment of shivering pleasure. Jets of tasty gray pass through the deep foggy sherbet. Each bite of this sherbet delivers a shrill set of flavors that are bitter, sweet, and slightly smoky. This one is so creepy and delicious, it’ll give you chills.".

When I ordered it, I was warned, "it has scotch, that's ok, right?"  I was suddenly even *more* interested.  Of course that was ok!

The look of this ice cream was not exactly appealing, a shade of gray, not the color food normally is.  But the taste?  Wonderful.  All the smoky qualities of scotch, in an ice cream.  It was fairly savory, only a little sweet.  I loved the smokiness.

A unique flavor, and I really enjoyed it, but wished for some texture from chunks of ... something.  I'm still not sure what would pair well with it, but I wanted bits of something inside.

****.

Pots of Gold & Rainbows.

"For this legendary technicolor favorite, we hand-sort the luck from the charms, steeping the whole-grain cereal in cream for that bottom-of-the-bowl sweetened milk before stirring in mountains of rainbow ‘mallows."

I don't remember what the theme or collaboration was the month that brought about Pots of Gold & rainbows.  

This isn't a flavor I'd ever go out of my way to purchase a pint of.  It sounded like a "cereal milk" base, with, well, Lucky Charms.   I ... don't really like Lucky Charms.  This flavor is all about, well, Lucky Charms.  They even make it with real Lucky Charms cereal.  And yes, they do just use the now standard cereal milk technique to steep the milk in the cereal base (made famous by the original from Milk Bar in New York, which of course I've reviewed before).

That said, I do like cereal milk ice cream (sometimes, but not Ben & Jerry's Frozen Flakes™ version, and not the Frokzen Kuhsterd Cinnamon Toast Crunch), and so when a friend offered a pint in exchange for some protein mug muffins (she ordered a case of this online, I had a case of the muffins and they were far too healthy for me), it seemed like a winning trade.  So I gave it a try.

My first impression?  Like all of the other Salt & Straw ice cream I had before, it is clearly super premium high quality ice cream.  And, yes, wow, it tasted exactly like Lucky Charms! Which, I mean, it should, but wow!  The flavor was remarkable in that way.

And if you know Lucky Charms, then you know this means it is very sweet, marshmallowy, and slightly fruity.  Lucky Charms aren't my favorite thing, but this turned out to be a pretty fun, tasty,evolution of the "cereal milk" ice cream fad.  I enjoyed trying it, and certainly polished off the pint with no issue, but, I wouldn't get the flavor again.

***+.

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Mt Tam Cheese with Toasted Acme Bread

"Cowgirl Creamery makes some of the best artisan cheese in America, inspiring the perfect cheese plate in ice cream form to show it off. We blend their Mt Tam cheese—rind and all— into the base of this flavor to capture both the funky notes and creamier-than-creamy richness of this perfect cheese. We then swirl in homemade sour cherry and apricot jam and bits of famed Ferry Building bakery Acme Bread’s Fruit and Walnut Bread that we toast and candy so they stay crunchy in every scoop!"

When Salt & Straw partnered with two San Francisco Ferry Building staples, Acme Bread and Cowgirl Creamery, I was all in.  I knew both the base products very, very well, so this one sounded far to fascinating not to try.  

Cowgirl Creamery's Mt. Tam is one of my favorite cheeses (my first real introduction to the fact that triple creams were, in fact, not *all* just called brie, lol).  Acme Bread was a foundation of my life when I first moved to San Francisco.  And yup, I love sour cherry jam.  Basically, I love all the things in this flavor, but, uh, normally they come on a cheese plate, not an ice cream cone.

It was as strange and awesome as it sounded.  A savory flavor, salty, funky in all the right ways from the Mt. Tam.  I love that they included the rind in it.  It was what I expected the famed burrata ice cream from Dominque Ansel to taste like (but sadly, I didn't taste burrata in it at all!).  The sweet jam was a perfect pairing, and although you didn't find distinct chunks of bread, it added a texture much like a graham cracker swirl.

This was fairly awesome, and really something different.  For those times when you can't decide if you want a cheese platter or "real" dessert, turn to this!

****.