Savouring the present, while pondering the past.
Our experience
This week marks our 52nd week of working from home!! Yup, one whole year! :O A year blurred by pulling the longest work hours ever, punctuated by trotting around the city on the weekends, the occasional breath of fresh air on daytrips, and of course, dessert deliveries — Supermoon, Four & Twenty Blackbirds, Kitsby, Bien Cuit, and Dre’s Desserts. With winter slowly giving way to spring here in NYC, we thought we’d share our latest dessert discovery – Sundae Service!
Similar to Dre’s Desserts, Sundae Service is a minority-owned dessert maker. For delivery on Sundays, you simply place an order on their online platform by mid-week. Whereas Dre’s Desserts focused on very American flavours – e.g. red velvet, bourbon vanilla, cookie monster etc — Sundae Service offers a menu of Asian flavours. Currently, there are six flavours available, of which we ordered three.
The “Ginger Black Sesame” ($10.99) is inspired by tang yuan, the chewy rice flour balls typically filled with black sesame paste (or red bean or crushed peanuts), and found floating in a bowl of hot ginger sugar syrup. Sundae Service captured the essence of this dessert by studding black sesame crumble through a ginger milk ice cream base. The result was a very robustly-flavoured ice cream.
The “Jasmine Tea with Roasted Rice Clusters” ($10.99) was our favourite of the three pints of ice cream that we ordered from Sundae Service. The ice cream base was jasmine tea flavoured, made in collaboration with another minority small business, Us Two Tea. It was embedded with roasted rice clusters for textural contrast.
Being a sorbet, the “Pandan Coconut” ($9.99) was lighter in mouthfeel, but no less strongly flavoured. Perfectly paired with a bowl of tropical fruit, we can definitely see this one being on repeat order throughout the upcoming humid summer months in NYC. It was akin to shovelling spoons of snow into our mouths, albeit coconut flavoured snow. 😛
Our verdict
There are many, many ice cream stores in NYC, but aside from the Chinatown Icecream Factory and Kaylee’s Creamery, we are struggling to think of one that focuses on Asian flavours. Sundae Service certainly fills that hole. By invoking both the traditions and flavours of Asian, and churning ice cream with a distinctly modern sensibility (i.e. no artificial colours or preservatives, using fresh milk, cream, eggs etc), a spoon of Sundae Service’s ice cream is akin to savouring the present while pondering the past. Here’s a toast to more ice cream creativity in NYC!
Dessert adventure checklist
- ☑ Dessert destination: Sundae Service, order via online delivery platform here.
- ☑ Budget: $-$$.
- ☑ Sweet irresistibles: Ice cream.
- ☑ Must-eat: Jasmine Tea ice cream + Pandan coconut ice cream.
- ☑ The short and sweet story: Savouring the present while pondering the past.
Dessert Correspondents 