Koolfi Creamery

As part of the SF Vacant to Vibrant program, the SF government is “helping small businesses, entrepreneurs, artists, and cultural organizations activate vacant storefronts to revitalize the area and promote economic recovery”, by paying their rent for the first few months, giving them grant money to seed their operations, providing resources to help with securing permits, etc. Many of these vacant storefronts are around my office and neighborhood, and it has been nice to see some activity in these pretty sad empty shops.  As someone who eats ice cream (or gelato or froyo) literally every day, of course I was excited to see, Koolfi Creamery, an ice cream shop as one of the latest batch of businesses.

"Koolfi Creamery creates Indian-inspired ice creams with fresh, local California Straus dairy. They are a queer and immigrant women-owned business that operates a shop in San Leandro and a pint wholesaling operation."

The business is not brand new, as they have a storefront in San Leandro, and do sell pints at a few grocery stores around.  The popup space is simple but well designed, and I found the staff remarkably friendly.

Flavors.

"Our ice creams are crafted in small batches with wholesome, real ingredients that I grew up with, and fresh local ingredients when possible. No artificial flavors! One lick and you will want a tub all for your self!"

I was even more excited when I saw their flavors. 

Many Indian flavors, such as their signature Malai koolfi, mango lassi, or Holi basil.  Sparkly fairy glitter rainbow sprinkles cake batter.  Slightly exotic flavors like jackfruit + coconut.  Even vegan offering like dark chocolate.

More flavors.

The flavor hits kept going and got even more interesting from there, with fresh strawberry with balsamic and tamarind, butterscotch with cashew pralines, roasted banana with gulab jamuns, lotus & rose ...

In addition to scoops, they also have toppings, and sundaes (which can include gulab jamun as the base!).

I had *such* a hard time deciding what kind to get my first visit.

Jackfruit & Coconut.

At last minute, I decided on jackfruit & coconut. The allure of the jackfruit was just too much. It is just too rare to see around SF.

The base ice cream was clearly fresh and high quality. No icy bits, smooth, and served at exactly the right temperature, not too hard, not too melty. The jackfruit flavor was subtle but present, and the coconut tiny bits within provided some texture. It was certainly not an overly sweet ice cream.

Overall, clearly a quality product, but the flavors were a bit less intense than I was hoping for. I’d love to try more though. ***+.

Savory Spicy Bun.

During my visit they also had samples of some savory spicy buns.  I didn't catch the name, but they were really quite flavorful, Indian flavors, with some legit heat to them as well. Fascinating, and I'd love to learn more about them (and understand why they had them, as ice cream and spicy savory buns don't seem like a natural product pairing ...).  ***+.