Paul Bass Photo
Plant-based panorama: Some of the flavors at newly-opened Vía Láctea
The sign said “frozen desserts.” Some people called it “ice cream.”
Whatever they called it, a crowd dug into scoops of plant-based … “nice cream?” Tuesday at a ribbon-cutting event on Whitney Avenue.
Coquito scoop.
The event marked the cold open of Vía Láctea (“Milky Way”), the city’s first all-vegan ice cream and baked-goods shop at 2 Whitney along one of Yale University Properties’ commercial strips. No animals were killed or enslaved to make this stuff. And the planet is better off.
Some tried praline nice cream. Some tried “mylk and cookies,” others coquito or vanilla bean caramel or dark chocolate.
New Haven has some ice-cream shops (Elena’s, Ashley’s) that offer a vegan flavor or two. This is the first to give vegans a palette of choices with ambitious experiments in the mix.
Chefs Reinaldo Sánchez and Lorivie Alicea opened the shop after six years running plant-based frozen dessert shops in Puerto Rico. They make all their desserts on site from natural ingredients, mostly local. They’re riding the growing popularity of plant-based foods as well as the evolution of rich and edible (as opposed to watery) vegan “ice cream” in particular. (Watch Sánchez describe the process from the kitchen in the above video.) Their baked-good concoctions made them James Beard Foundation Awards semifinalists this year.
“You need to have full-fat coconut milk” to get the right mouth feel, Sánchez said. He and Alicea use 100 percent Ghirardelli chocolate as well to strengthen the flavor.
My fellow vegan Independent colleague Laura Glesby noticed that richness as she sampled a scoop of pistachio almond. She was sold on Vía Láctea with that first spoonful.
“It doesn’t taste like it’s imitating anything,” Laura said, drawing a parallel to Bertie Bott’s jelly beans. “It tastes like it contains the thing.”
After officials cut the ribbon, John Pollard queued up for his first-ever vegan scoop, of praline.
“Absolutely delicious,” he said. “I can’t really tell the difference” from “real” ice cream.
Mayor Justin Elicker said he plans to make regular stops from his nearby City Hall office for scoops of… whatever you call it.
“If it walks like a duck, it’s a duck. And that looks like ‘ice cream’ to me,” he decreed.
Going local: Reinaldo Sánchez at the Emery Thompson batch freezer, which churns five gallons of vegan ice cream in ten minutes in the kitchen.
