Although the new Salt & Straw ice cream location has been open since April of 2022, based on what I had seen of their offerings, I was in no hurry to try them. Most of the flavors have some kind of bizarre ingredient twist such as deviled egg custard, blue cheese or even seafood?! Not things I want in my ice cream to be honest. 🍦
Apparently I’m in the minority here because what started as a mere ice cream cart in Portland, Oregon has ballooned into a national chain with a cult following which, according to their website, includes the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Rachel Ray. They also have a fan in Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson seeing as he’s an investor.
After seeing a movie in Disney Springs on a recent visit, Alan and I walked out of the theatre and found ourselves right in front of Salt & Straw. Since there was no line, we decided to check them out.
The latest “of the month” offerings were all flavors in The Veggies you Crave Series and included combinations like Spinach Cake with Chocolate Tahini Fudge and Charred Corn Curd, Cojija & Tajin.
Like I said, I’ve had a lot of hesitation about some of the flavors at Salt & Straw, however, while spinach and corn aren’t the first choices I would want in my ice cream, if you think about it, corn bread, carrot cake and zucchini bread area all amazing vegetable based sweets, so maybe this whole vegetable ice cream thing wasn’t so far off. I was willing to give them a shot.
At Salt & Straw they allow you to try any flavors your want before ordering so we started with the Spinach Cake with Chocolate Tahini Fudge. After tasting it, my first reaction was that it was on the salty side for ice cream. Honestly I thought that’s what the “salt” part of the name was referring to, the savory, somewhat salty flavors that they offer.
As it turns out, I was wrong. The salt part of their name is in reference to the old style of ice cream making that involved lots of salt (and straw) so, nothing to do with the actual flavors themselves. Regardless, both flavors we tried were quite salty so unless you order a flavor that is strictly sweet, I would expect a level of saltiness to it.
Neither Alan nor I could taste any hint of spinach in the ice cream. Apparently the spinach is pureed, baked into a cake which is then chocolate frosted and mixed into the ice cream. I did taste the vanilla ice cream base flavor and the cake flavor but it was hard to differentiate the chocolate frosting versus the smears of tahini fudge (I’ve never had tahini so I can’t say that I would recognize it.)
The other flavor we tried was Carrot Cake Batter with Pralined Hazelnuts. When I ordered it, the employee said “that one has pork gel in it, is that ok?” Is that ok? No. No that’s not ok. Not at all ok. Not even a little bit. Why would anyone put pork gel in ice cream?! What even IS pork gel? 🤔 But, as I was thinking this, I realized she was really just asking in case I was vegan or vegetarian and not at all because she was interested in my personal culinary opinion. I decided to just let her know that was fine, I would take it, pork gel and all.
This one had a flavor that was pretty much what you would expect from the name but again my first reaction was being taken back by how salty it was (probably the pork gel, smh 🤦♀️.) The flavor was that of carrot cake and, in some bites it even tasted almost pumpkin like, along with the typical spices you would expect in either a carrot cake or pumpkin pie type of dessert.
The pralined hazelnuts weren’t too over powering in volume or flavor, which is a good thing in my opinion as I’m not a big fan of nuts. There is supposed to be a swirl of cheesecake frosting throughout this ice cream, which I would have loved to have tasted, but I didn’t pick up on that at all.
While we plan on going back to try some of their more traditional, sweet ice cream flavors before making a final judgement, overall I’m not part of the Salt & Straw cult. It was fun to try such novel flavors but it’s just not quite what I’m looking for when I want ice cream. Neither flavor really satisfied my craving for ice cream and I found I didn’t like them enough to even want to finish the scoop.
I would say if you’re into strange food combinations, or just curious to try some of Salt & Straws unique flavors, I would recommend it as it is a fun, novel snack, but consider just getting a scoop to share until you know for sure if you’re a fan. Otherwise, after a few bites you might find the novelty of trying weird flavors wears off faster than your ice cream craving is satisfied and you’re left wanting a big old hot fudge sundae…or maybe that’s just me?
One more thing, if you do go, be aware they’re on the pricey side. Our two, single scoop cups of ice cream cost us over $14. A waffle cone is an additional $2 while a kids scoop, which we were told is about the size of a golf ball, is $5.75 before tax.
What do you think of the bizarre flavors at Salt and Straw?
If you have been to Salt and Straw, what flavor do you recommend we try next? Leave it in the comments!