Ample Hills - It Came From Gowanus

It Came From Gowanus - Salted Dark Chocolate Base with Hazelnut Crack Cookies topped with White Chocolate Pearls and Orange- Scented Brownies

Today we review the last of Ample Hills' Taste of New York 4-pack that I ordered a couple of weeks ago now.   The last flavor is called It Came From Gowanus.  The flavor is so named for two reasons.  It is the exclusive flavor for their scoop shop in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn and also because one of the co-founders of Ample Hills (Brian Smith) is a former science-fiction writer so they made the flavor name sound like 1950s sci-fi movie.  I saved this flavor for last as it is the most famous of the 4-pack.  The Food Network featured it in this video where they crowned it the number one ice cream in America.  That video provides an excellent overview for the flavor.  It is a chocolate-lovers flavor with chocolate base and chocolatey mix-ins and the video shows how they make everything (including the mix-ins) by hand.

Postcard that came with the shipment that promotes the flavor as if it was a 1950s sci-fi movie

On to the ice cream!  Removing the lid shows the expected dark brown color of the chocolate base.  There is a hint of light frost on the top, but I can tell it is not enough to affect the flavor or consistency.  Digging into the pint, it is quite thick and chocolatey.  It is listed as a salted chocolate, but it is not too heavy on the salt.  Perhaps you want to drink a class of water when you are done but that is it.  Then it is just loaded with mix-ins.  The white chocolate pearls are visible in some of the pictures below.  They are about the size of BB pellets.  The brownie pieces were actually blended in pretty well.  The base ice cream is so thick and chocolatey that the brownie pieces were just chewier parts of the mix.  I did notice a hint of citrus.  It was not overly orangey -- it just seemed to brighten things up a bit and keep all the chocolate from becoming too overwhelming.  The hazelnut crack cookies were the star of the pint.  They are similar to the crack cookies in their Salted Crack Caramel flavor in that they are somehow crunchy and buttery at the same time.  I have never had crack cookies outside of ice cream before but they seem to make the perfect mix-in.  There were a lot of mix-ins in this pint, but it all seemed perfectly balanced.  That balance in most of their flavors seems to be one of Ample Hills' specialties.

This was an extremely successful pint which lives up to its billing.  I am not even a chocoholic and I liked it.  If you're in the Gowanus scoop shop, this is definitely the flavor to try.

All in all, I really enjoyed the 4-pack.  This was my first foray into ice cream by mail.  The shipping costs were not trivial here but it looks like something fun to do a couple of times a year.  How would I rank the four flavors?  As awesome as this Gowanus flavor was, I actually liked the Commodore flavor better.  Perhaps that's the non-chocoholic in me talking.  This flavor was a close second.  Then I'd put the Harry & Eigel Marbled and Malted flavor with the Floatin on the High Line flavor's niche root beer appeal coming fourth.