Coolhaus - Dirty Mint Chip

Dirty Mint Chip - Mint Leaf Ice Cream with Brown Sugar and Semi-Sweep Chips

I was in an old neighborhood over the weekend and decided to check out my old grocery store to see if they had anything interesting.  Lo and behold, I found a few new brands of specialty ice cream which looked interesting.  Today, I review a brand called Coolhaus and their Dirty Mint Chip flavor.  Coolhaus was founded by Natasha Case and Freya Estreller in Culver City, California.  They have food trucks in Texas and New York and recently have opened up a second scoop shop in Old Town Pasadena.  Coolhaus claims that their ice cream is "architecturally inspired".  Each flavor is associated with a famous architect.  Dirty Mint Chip is associated with "Buck-Mint-ster Fuller" the 20th century architect and futurist who was fond of geodesic domes.  Chemists will also recognize the name because when an allotrope of carbon was discovered to have a cage-like structure reminiscent of geodesic dome, it was buckminsterfullerene (or "buckyball") in honor of the architect.  Well, so far they've succeeded in architecturally inspiring me, hopefully the ice cream tastes good, too.

Popping off the lid shows the white color of the mint base (no artificial green here) which does not quite reach the top of the container leaving a bit of a rounded freshly extruded look rather than a flatted off top.  McConnell's pints are like that as well.  Dark specks are visible on the top.  At first I thought that these must be the chips, but a closer inspection shows that some of them are green. Tiny bits of shredded mint leaves are mixed into the ice cream.  That's new.  Eating my way into the pint, the ice cream was dense but still soft.  The mint flavor was quite evident but not overly strong.  I didn't really notice the difference that the shredded mint leaves brought to the flavor but it was kind of cool knowing that some of the mint flavor was coming from that.  The chips were miniature semi-sweet chips that you can buy at the store (see photo below).  I think the standard flake-like chips or the half-melted McConnell's chips do a better job of providing chocolate flavor but these chips gave you the feeling of being in a scoop shop where the chips.  The label mentions that there is brown sugar mixed in (is that what makes it dirty?).  I didn't really taste it.  I double-checked the website and it says its just a 'hint' of brown sugar.  It might have been too subtle for me.

A fun pint.  I love a good pint of mint chip.  It does not unseat McConnell's Mint Chip  as my favorite implementation of my favorite flavor, but its fun to try new brands (and of course, its fun to be architecturally inspired).  Checking the Coolhaus website it looks like many of the scoop shop flavors are more adventurous than the pints I saw in my store.  Plus, it looks like they are more known for their ice cream sandwiches where you can choose a gourmet cookie to wrap a scoop of their ice cream.