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According to nutritionists, wine will either extend your life or shorten it. Until recently, I was unaware that the same can be said of ice cream. An article in The Atlantic reported on a funny phenomenon: to the surprise, dismay, and—to read between the lines—embarrassment of experts, more than one legitimate scientific study has suggested that the consumption of ice cream might mitigate or even prevent diabetes. And so, depending on how you read the data, a visit to Caleta, a natural-wine bar slash ice-cream parlor in the East Village (131 Ave. A; bar bites and ice cream $5.50-$16), is either an exercise in hedonistic excess or a wellness retreat. Perhaps it’s the same difference when you consider the mental-health potential: by the end of a recent date there, a friend and I were both very, very happy.
We started with bar bites, all of them. There was a dish of glossy mixed olives, marinated with piparra peppers in yuzu-kosho olive oil, and a crusty, squishy half of a sourdough baguette, which we ripped into hunks to smear with butter or to sandwich with Comté cheese, housemade blackberry jam, and folds of thinly sliced mortadella arranged like a blooming pink peony. A soft pretzel dressed with mustard and a tin of mussels escabeche (from Minnow, the preserved-fish line by the owners of Cervo’s and Hart’s), served with matzo and more butter, made for a perfect second course. To drink: rosé (providing a dose of resveratrol, a compound found in wine which some believe protects the heart) and Figlia Fiore, a non-alcoholic aperitif made with rose extract, bitter orange rind, and ginseng, among other ingredients.
A rotating roster of flavors might include miso-raspberry or toasted milk.
Call it a prelude to a sundae. Caleta is the first retail operation from Javier Zuñiga and Jesse Merchant Zuñiga, a married couple, both restaurant vets, who started, in 2020, an ice-cream brand called Bad Habit, previously sold in pints and through stockists only. At Caleta, they offer their French-style (i.e., custard-based) flavors by both the pint and the scoop. (They also host the occasional wine-and-sorbet tasting.) The details of the sundae shift regularly. Mine featured toasted-milk ice cream, topped with crunchy chunks of sweet, sticky honeycomb, a big dollop of soft whipped cream, a drizzle of chocolate sauce, and a maraschino cherry.
It was messy and glorious and over too fast. I took home souvenirs: pints of a super-rich orange creamsicle, with big swirls of real pulp; peanut stracciatella, flecked with shards of semisweet chocolate; and a zesty pomegranate-lime—plus a beautiful ice-cream sandwich made with crackly-topped salted chocolate cookies and a subtle, grassy matcha ice cream.
Caleta is also a natural-wine bar, with a menu of snacks, including sourdough and cultured butter, tinned fish with matzo, a soft pretzel drizzled in mustard, and yuzu-kosho-marinated olives.
There are, of course, many valid reasons not to consume dairy. No dairy does not necessarily mean no ice cream, especially in the past few years, as ingredients such as cashew milk and coconut cream have been taken to new heights, but it does typically mean no soft serve. Enter Morgenstern’s Bananas, a new venture from the ice-cream impresario Nick Morgenstern, in the site of his original store (2 Rivington St.; soft serve $5.55-$9.99). This is not a place specializing, as I first assumed, in banana soft serve (also known as “banana whip” or “nice cream”), for which the frozen fruit is blended, sometimes with add-ins, to surprisingly creamy effect. Only one of the non-dairy soft-serve flavors here contains bananas: banana vanilla, with a base of coconut cream.
The flavors are each made with a unique recipe, served in a brightly colored rainbow of squiggles. The other day, I ordered a pair of lovely, refreshing twists, dispensed neatly into a single cup. One side featured Mucho Mango, made with mango and orange purées, and Sumo Strawberry, made with strawberry and mandarin purées plus rice milk. On the other side was Coconut Thai Tea (coconut milk, rice milk, tea, sweet potato) and Ube Cookies N’ Cream, made with purple yam and real Oreos, which happen to be dairy-free. ♦
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