Ample Hills Creamery from Brooklyn, NY

Astoria location.

My last pre-pandemic trip was to New York City. Having been numerous other times, I decided to give that trip a focus: pizza (R.I.P. Domenico DeMarco, founder of Di Fara), bagels, and Ample Hills Creamery ice cream. From the factory in Red Hook to the shop at the south end of the High Line in Chelsea to a few blocks from Madison Square Garden before a Rangers game, Ample Hills had the flavors that kept me coming back. This past January when I was flying back to Chicago after the holidays with family, I used my four hour layover to take a quick bus trip from LaGuardia to the Astoria location.

Here are my favorite flavors I have tried so far:

Salted Crack'd Caramel: burnt caramel ice cream with chocolate covered buttery crackers

Every so often I have a flavor that awakens my tastebuds in a way that makes them seem somehow more alive than they have ever been. This is one of those flavors. Burnt caramel 4eva.

Egg-carton flight.

Snap, Mallow, Pop!: marshmallow ice cream with baked rice crispy clusters

When I think of marshmallows in ice cream I usually think of that cloyingly sweet fluff. Or I think of toasted marshmallows blended into the base. This flavor is neither, embracing the subtlety of the marshmallow found in Rice Krispies Treats. That, plus the puffed rice? Yum.

The Munchies: pretzel-infused ice cream with Ritz crackers, potato chips, pretzels and crushed M&M's

Crush the pretzels to dust and blend them into the base. Why, oh why, haven't I thought of this? Too often pretzels in ice cream soften into disappointment. Here you get the flavor and the texture of the mix-ins. Personally, I wanted more chocolate but still a must try flavor.

To make matters even more exciting, every location of Ample Hills Creamery features an original flavor specific to that particular location. I can't say I've tried them all (yet)--especially the Jersey City location or the one in Long Beach, CA--but trying their different flavors is definitely ice cream crawl material.