![]() Flavors ranged from Smores and Oreos to fruitier ones like Strawberry to more Asian ones like Thai Tea, Green Tea/Matcha, and Lychee.Ī lot of people are also going here for the Instagram picture. Some toppings and drizzles go better with some flavors than others. I think there can be some trickiness in terms of ordering the right toppings and drizzles. Lines moved quickly and they had plenty of employees to make sure everything was running smoothly. It does take a few minutes for your ice cream to be made, but you get to watch it happen which is part of the experience you are paying for. However, if it does, they can always turn to Facebook to find the next new dessert everyone will soon crave.GENERAL: Overall I was very impressed. Of course, that boom quickly went bust, something Quach and Tam probably don’t want to see happen again. (Quach and his partners have either expanded, or are planning to, in the West Village, Flushing, Brooklyn, and Forrest Hills.) Quach likens the growth to the recent explosion of fro-yo shops. In a city where people are always on the hunt for fresh experiences, that combination has allowed operators like Tam and Quach to expand quickly. The desserts look appealing, offer something new, and tend to amplify the best parts of traditional frozen sweets. (Just look at the New World Mall in Flushing, which is typically mobbed with teenagers.) But the appeal is probably even simpler than that. In New York, desserts like Thai rolled ice cream and shaved snow have also helped define a kind of modern sensibility that evolves the city’s East Asian culinary scene beyond the traditional Chinatown hotbeds geared toward working-class immigrants. Meanwhile, 10Below has already expanded to Flushing, the current epicenter of New York’s Chinese community. ![]() And two more downtown shops, Frozen Sweet and Minus Celsius Ice Cream, opened earlier this year. An international Thai chain expanded to the city last August with I CE NY and has plans to open in Atlanta, Baltimore, and Delray Beach in the Miami metropolitan area. The Lower East Side’s Juicy Spot Cafe added Thai rolled to its menu last year. Several other spots serving Thai rolled ice cream, also called stir-fried ice cream, have opened up over the last year. In fact, a whole scene of innovative New York shops have opened specializing in desserts that first gained traction in East Asian countries. (The creation has also been called shaved cream, snow ice, fluff ice, milk fluff, and snowy shaved ice.) It’s a variation on shaved ice, made by freezing dairy into the base, that is topped with just about anything: drizzles of condensed milk or peanut-butter sauce, grass jelly, matcha brownies, candy, red bean, and more. ![]() “Having access to people posting in Hong Kong and Japan, we’re able to keep up with different trends and really stay on top of our game,” says Tony Quach, the co-founder of the immensely popular Snowdays, which opened in August 2014 and specializes in a Taiwanese dessert called shaved snow. In the case of 10Below, it gave Tam instant insight into things that were happening thousands of miles away, in Thailand or, say, Taiwan, or Hong Kong, or, for that matter, Southern California, another hotbed of East Asian culinary influence. Three years ago, the instant rise of fake Cronuts demonstrated how social media hyperaccelerates food trends and gives chefs and owners access to a wealth of ideas they’ve never had before. Instead, he got the idea after watching a Facebook video of rolled ice cream being made. ![]() Although most New Yorkers hadn’t even heard of the dessert before 10Below opened, Tam was sure it could be big in this city - something he decided even though he himself had never actually had it. The instantly frozen pastry sheets are scraped into rolls and served with toppings like Nutella and Oreo. Instead, the shop specializes in a frozen dessert called Thai rolled ice cream, which is made by spreading sheets of pastry cream on a supercold “anti-griddle” that’s cranked to -10 degrees Fahrenheit. This was despite no real marketing on the part of Tam and his business partners, who were first-time restaurateurs. When 23-year-old Richard Tam opened his Chinatown shop 10Below last year, it quickly drew three-hour lines of eager customers. ![]()
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