The sweltering, humid New Orleans heat is a thing that requires very particular, sometimes desperate measures. This isn’t just the hottest season of the year, as it is everywhere else (except Australia, where it’s cold this time of year – hard to imagine!?); it’s the time of year when you might see a line at Hansen’s snowball stand that goes out the door and around the corner. I was in the Marigny the other day and saw a girl riding her bike wearing only a bra and a feebly tied bandana on top. I get in my car and my glasses fog up. I walk to get a Coke Icee and my skin gets sticky. Yes, it’s a singular season that requires a good bit of adjustment and adaptation.
Snacking, of course, is one of the things that we might be first inclined to adapt. This would explain my insatiable hankering for gazpacho and Concoction, my near repulsion at the idea of anything hot/molten/rich (actually, that’s a lie; when am I ever repulsed by anything with any of those descriptors?), and my yearning for the fresh produce that’s so pretty and crisp and simple right now. Cold, sweet things are also a must: popsicles, snowballs, Icees, and the like. That said, I’m not quite sure there’s anything like a good cup of gelato to soothe my muggy woes. Below, a photo diary:
My all-time favorite: La Divina's chocolate azteca. The rich cacao flavor cools and delights your palate while flecks of cinnamon and pepper heat your throat. Note the perilous drippiness of the gelato as it melts.
Sucré's toasted almond gelato + chocolate peanut-buttery swirled gelato. Sucré's flavors are decidedly sweeter and definitely less risky or exotic than some of La Divina's selections, and for a while, I preferred La Divina's head and shoulders above it. But Sucré had an Easter special that featured giant hollow chocolate eggs filled with a treat -- most likely a coupon for free gelato, but, if you were lucky, a day in the kitchen with Tariq Hanna -- and in my frenzy to test my luck, I ended up with seven (7) gelato coupons. This resulted in my spending MUCH more time at Sucré and coming to love some of their offerings. The two gelaterias, which share a Magazine Street block, are completely different -- I have never craved both simultaneously -- but completely good, and with staying power.
Further complicating things is the fact that Sucré now makes its own gelato base in house (it used to get a top-notch base made and shipped from, I think, Atlanta). This is a scoop of the most tender, creamy vanilla gelato that I was given at Sucré's media tasting. The new base is worlds different from its predecsessor: richer, fuller, a better vehicle for any given flavor. This makes Sucré a definite yes in my book not just for entremets and chocolates, but also for a good cup of ice cream in these hot summer months before I go packing to New England and its vastly different frigidity.
