Teevy Challenge Continued - Miami Ice Cream and Sweets

[Vital Information]

How great a place when they are sitting in front hacking away at sugar cane to flavor tomorrow's ice cream!

Miami Ice Cream and Sweets opened a few weeks just at the point of Division where it turns into Puerto Rican Broadway. They make an array of fresh ice creams and ices, mostly in tropical flavors such as mamey, mango, tamarindo--all ices, avocado, much, much better than it sounds and some conventional flavors like cherry. In fact, I believe the stock is mixed with a few ringers like the cherry and a rum raisin.

The chocolate chunk I had tonight, however, was clearly homemade. It had that gritty quality you do not find in a machine. Plus irregular chocolate chips to let you taste the hand (as they say). I also sampled the avocado, as I alluded to above, extremely creamy and rich, the avocado contributing fat more than flavor. Suberb ice creams.

Flavors change every three days, hopefully this will limit the problem of icy or stale ice cream. I look forward to trying tomorrow's Domminican choclate, which that sugar cane was intended.

Miami Ice Cream and Sweets
2506 W. Division
Chicago

[annieb]

I wonder if they use the large avocados that are so maligned. Here they are usually labeled Florida avocados, that's partly what makes me wonder if Puerto Rico likes them too. These are the avocados we ate as desert in Brasil. Very simply, cut in half (around the equator) and then the cavity filled with sugar and enough lemon or lime juice added to dissolve the sugar. Push down into the avocado to let the sugar/lemon solution permeate, maybe mash a bit, and eat.

I still have a fondness for these avocados and often eat them just this way.

[Vital Information]

Very good call Ms. B! I am pretty sure they do use the smooth, Florida avocado for the ice cream. The ice cream man was telling us he took his staff to the market that day to learn about tropical fruits, and then he showed us some examples he had on his counter. They included two kinds of coconut, papaya, some tropical melons without English names and the smooth avocado.

So, now go and try the ice cream.

Rob

[JeffB]

In my experience, the so-called Florida avocado is the only kind you are likely to see in the Carribean and, as you pointed out, South America. The Haas, which was practically exotica not too many years ago, seems to like more of a Mediterranean climate. They don't travel nearly as well as the leathery little baseballs from California, but the Florida fruits can be damn fine on their home turf. Speaking of avocados as sweets, the newer Chinese/Vietnamese bakery on Argyle (south side of the street near 777) makes a fantastic avocado shake. Finaly, hard to believe but true, I witnessed tonns of the fruits rotting on the ground in East Africa on a vacation several years ago, in an area where people had little to eat. I was told that people don't eat avocados there, but sometimes cows do. (Not criticism, just an observation. I can't imagine anyone disliking avocados, but many do.)