Food Truck Hunting: Van Leeuwen’s Ice Cream

The elusive Van Leeuwen’s Ice Cream truck has been evading me for months (nearly all of summer 2010, actually), like a temptress, always appearing after I’ve already enjoyed a long lunch or on one of the frequent occasions when I have no cash on hand. When I first spotted it, some months ago, parked on a SoHo corner on a hot summer day, the list of flavors and artful sketches of the organic ingredients naturally sparked my interest, but I kept on walking. I’m not a huge ice cream lover; that is to say, I always enjoy it, but I don’t “have to have it” when I see it. When it comes to ice cream, I am usually able to resist temptation, a rare triumph in the world of desserts.

But then, a few weeks ago, Van Leeuwen’s appeared to me again, more glamorous than ever in a Cooking Channel special on the sweet treats of New York. Officially hailing as “Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream,” this migrating ice cream stand offers a variety of hand-crafted flavors, from specialties like pistachio and espresso to classics like vanilla bean, chocolate, and mint chip. Every ingredient for each flavor is selected with great detail, using only the finest and highest quality products to create their ice cream masterpieces.

The ice cream king has recently opened a permanent outpost in Greenpoint, Brooklyn – a nod to its growing popularity and even cult-like following. With the ice cream company’s employees and patrons alike offering praise and devotional words to the sweet scoops VL serves up, at first only through word-of-mouth and bloggings, but now on broadcast television, I realized that I had to see what this food truck had to offer.

But of course, like most things in life, the more you want something, the less likely it is to appear before you. It’s the old “a watched pot never boils” conundrum. And as I hoped to spot Van Leewen’s every time I took a stroll on an empty stomach, the famous ice cream truck stayed far away from me.

Then, finally, late last week as I was rounding a corner near work, there it was – the VL truck! But wait – it was in motion. The driver was slowly backing up and pulling away from the curb on Sullivan Street. I quickly snapped a photo of it as a reminder to more actively scout out its location, watching sadly as the sign for Pumpkin Pie ice cream disappeared into the distance.

But then, this past weekend, as if by fate, I was strolling through the West Village when suddenly – there it was! The pale yellow truck was set up across the street, fully open for business

I made an immediate beeline for the truck, with my heart set on some pumpkin ice cream. While pumpkin just about anything will spur my appetite this time of year, I was particularly intent on trying VL’s pumpkin ice cream because of what I’ve heard about the process the company uses to make its delicious scoops. Van Leeuwen’s uses only the finest ingredients, starting with local, hormone free milk and cream from New York farmers, to which they add fresh egg yolks and pure cane sugar – no preservatives, no stabilizers, no nonsense. In my ice cream fantasy, this particular flavor was made with lots of cinnamon and fresh pumpkin puree from yet another New York farm, and I couldn’t wait to give it a try.

Unfortunately, being late in the afternoon as it was, the truck was already sold out of this popular autumn flavor. The Cooking Channel special had warned about this – each VL truck is loaded up with only so much of each decadent flavor, and once that flavor is gone, that’s it for the day. Favorites like classic Strawberry and Chocolate, made with Michel Cluizel artisan french chocolates, often sell out first, forcing die-hard ice cream fans to make use of Van Leeuwen’s Twitter feed to follow the truck and find it early on in the day, before all the good stuff is gone.

Lucky for me, there was another seasonal flavor on the menu – Egg Nog Ice Cream. The woman inside the truck was kind enough to let me sample the flavor, and I was sold. I ordered a small (yeah, right) cone – pictured below – and proceeded to devour it. Even for someone who’s not much of an ice cream fanatic, this cone did NOT disappoint. The ice cream itself was thick, sweet, and almost buttery, coating your palate but not making your mouth feel weighed down like some ice creams can do. The egg nog flavor, while not necessarily completely reminiscent of the holiday drink, was definitely a flavor of fall, with undercurrents of nutmeg and vanilla running through every lick. One of my fellow diners opted for the Ginger ice cream, which was extremely refreshing and, I was happy to taste, not at all overwhelming in ginger flavor, which can be very potent. All in all, Van Leeuwen’s definitely rounds out the top of my list of favorite ice creams, and I definitely recommend surrendering self-control and ordering a heavenly cone if you ever cross paths with this yellow truck.

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