Doug from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck posted a blog entry over the weekend, giving us an update on their new store, the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop, that should be opening in mid-to-late August.

You can read the entire blog entry here, but it is pretty long, so we condensed it below for our busy readers.

Since it’s their first store, Doug and Bryan wanted to do as much of the work themselves as possible.  This made things take a little longer, but it’s their store, and they wanted to learn how to build the first Big Gay Ice Cream Shop from scratch.

As for the treats, there will be some of the “old favorites”, albeit in an upgraded version.  The Choinkwich, which was suspended because they couldn’t meet the extraordinary demand, will be on the store’s menu (but not the truck). They are working with Bacon Marmalade to nail down a special brew just for the revamped Choinkwich.

Since there will be more machinery at the store, there will be a rotating list of custom soft-serve flavors in addition to vanilla and chocolate.

As for outside foods, there will be several:

Oslo Coffee Roasters – There will be a single blend. They are going for quality over quantity.  There won’t be fancy coffees, but there will be iced coffee available.

Danny Macaroons – “Danny knows his coconut, and makes an awesome gluten-free treat” says Doug.

Kim Ima from The Treats Truck will do the baked goods, such as brownies for sundaes.

Ice cream sandwiches will be from Melt Bakery.

Ice pops are made by La Newyorkina.

The store is located at 125 East 7th St.  We will let you know when it is slated to open.

Doug & Kim

After ordering what looks like a Bea Arthur (crushed ‘Nilla wafers) from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, this guy knelt down and proposed to his girlfriend right outside the truck window.

From the look on her face, and the fact that he’s putting a ring on her finger, I guess she said yes!

You don’t have to be gay to get married these days, but at least it’s an option for everyone who wants to in New York and a few other enlightened states!

(photo: Serious Eats)

As reported in Serious Eats, Doug & Bryan are expanding their empire by opening a store in mid-June on East 7th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A (in the former Xoom space).

We don’t know if they will call it the Big Gay Ice Cream Shoppe, but maybe they will consider it.

Doug tells us the store will give them room to experiment, and to do some of the things they’ve been dreaming of, like a nice big milkshake menu.  He also said Bryan’s going to run the store.

The shop will also reportedly sell treats from Treats Truck, ice cream sandwiches from Melt Bakery, Danny’s Macaroons, and possibly coffee.  They also want to eventually sell their own line of ice cream products, such as hand-packed pints and their wonderful toppings.

Not to worry. Once the store is up and running, they expect to have the truck back on the street as much as possible.

The Salty Pimp finds a home.  I’m getting verklempt just thinking about it.

Salty Pimp

Today they are having a photo shoot at the truck for the book, and Doug’s instructions are “Get freaky & get into our book! Requests: big girls in tutus, watermelons as shoes, wigs. Hula hoop til you puke!”

Basically, use your imagination.

Check their twitter here for exact times, but they expect to be at Broadway & 17th St this afternoon and then at Ave A & 13th St after dinner tonight.

Get down, get funky, get freaky with the Big Gay Ice Cream dudes (but be careful with that Salty Pimp).

Salty Pimp

With spring approaching, we’ve been checking in with the various food trucks who have been off the road for the winter, and wanted to give you an update on when you can expect to see them back.

KELVINSLUSH - Lots of people are asking us when Kelvin Natural Slush Co, the 2010 Vendy Award Winner for Best Dessert, will be back out.  They don’t have an exact date, but we were told it will be in early April.

SouvlakiGR - The 2010 Vendy Award Winner for Rookie of the Year is getting verrrry close to opening their new restaurant at 116 Stanton St on the Lower East Side.  A little birdie told us their NYC DOH inspection has already been scheduled, and if everything goes according to plan, they will open shortly thereafter.  Once the restaurant is comfortably up and running, they will be bringing the truck out again, too.

biggayicecream - The three-time Vendy Award finalists may be out for a couple of one-offs in March, with more days out as the weather gets warmer.  But don’t expect BGICT to be on the street full-time until early May. UPDATE- BGICT will be out Wed 3/9 in Union Square filming for the Food Network.  Check their twitter on Wed for more details.

The Cinnamon Snail – We heard back from the Cinnamon Snail, last year’s Vendy Award finalist in the Rookie of the Year category. Adam said their first day back will be Friday, March 25th, and he said to “look forward to a dope new array of goodies!”

TheTacoTruck - After taking the truck out for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Hoboken last weekend, TTT will be back out tomorrow!  They will be in Jersey City for lunch and uptown Hoboken for dinner on Tuesday and Thursday this week, and are in the process of solidifying their spring schedule.

laspicetruck Jessie from the Louisiana Spice Truck tells us that “March will be a good time to restart LST”, but he wasn’t specific about a date.  They will also be selling their excellent line of pastries, Le Petit Temptation, at the Liberty Towers gourmet shop on Hudson St in Jersey City.  Le Petit Temptation pastries have been sold at the Greene-Ville Gardens store in Fort Greene, Brooklyn since mid-January.

As you would expect, the ice cream/slush trucks are much more weather dependent than hot food trucks, but stay tuned and we’ll give you more details on all the food trucks as they come in.

Doug perfecting a cone at the 2010 Vendy Awards

Our buddies in the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck are going to be on the United Tastes Of America tonight at 9:30 on The Cooking Channel.  That’s Channel 51 on Time Warner Cable downtown, but check your local listings if you live elsewhere.

The United Tastes of America, hosted by Jeffrey Saad, is a new series that delves into the history, process, science and pop-culture that have transformed America’s favorite foods.  In each episode, Jeffrey focuses on one iconic American food classic — and how some of today’s hottest chefs reinterpret these icons in amazing and delicious ways.

Tonight’s episode is all about ice cream, and Doug & Bryan are among the “hottest chefs” featured.  (And it’s not just because of Doug’s Gazoo tattoo.)

ginger-mint slush from Kelvin

It’s that time of year again, when the frozen dessert trucks get ready to hibernate for winter.

We received an email from Alex of the Kelvin Natural Slush Co who told us their last day this year will be on Saturday, Oct 30th.  They will be on 14th Street between 3rd Ave and Irving Place on Saturday.  The truck will re-open in the spring, probably some time in March or April according to Alex.

Salty Pimp from BGICT

On Friday night, Oct 29th, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck and a few other trucks (we hear Souvlaki GR is one of them) will be outside their favorite East Village home, Destination Bar on the corner of 13th St & Ave A.

And Sunday, Oct 31st will be BGICT’s final night of the season.  It’s going to be wild!  Halloween and Big Gay Ice Cream Truck – a match made in hell!

Details have not been released yet, but check the BGICT twitter account here or our Mobile Munchies twitter feed here as the dates get closer for more details.

Then on Monday, Doug gets to hibernate for the winter with the other bears.

Best Dessert winner Alex Rein, last year's winner Thomas De Geest, host Pat Kiernan and Sean Basinski, Street Vendor Project

The Vendy Award Dessert category was a very difficult category to predict.  Any of the nominees could easily have been justified being chosen as the Best Dessert vendor, with 2 past Vendy finalists chosen again this year.

But the people at the event voted, and they chose Kelvin Natural Slush Company as the Best Dessert.  This has to be the first time a Vendy Award winner took their name from a temperature scale.

Kelvin came onto the scene a few days before our Dessert Alert on July 25th, which contains our first review of their delicious drink.  They came up with a couple of special slushes for the event: The Vendy, which was 1/2 ginger and 1/2 citrus slush with blueberry added, and The Governator, which was 1/2 citrus and 1/2 tea with pear added.  Congratulations to Alex and his team on this great win!

BGICT's Salty Pimp

Doug and Bryan from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck were nominated again this year after being a double nominee last year in the rookie and dessert categories.  They probably had the longest lines of the day, but everyone who read Doug’s blog post would understand that no ice cream machine could meet the demands of the Vendy Awards.

To help alleviate this, they set up a table on the side of the truck with small samples and toppings for people who did not want to wait on line.   I waited on line for about 1/2 hour for a Salty Pimp – and it was well worth it.  Thank you Doug and Bryan for serving such great ice cream and making us laugh at the same time – as long as your ice cream doesn’t come shooting out my nose because of it.

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Dessert Truck's warm chocolate bread pudding with vanilla custard sauce

Also back at the Vendy’s was Jerome Chang’s Dessert Truck, who were dessert category finalists in 2008.  Since then, they opened a store on the LES called DTWorks, took the truck off the road in 2009 – and put it back on the road in 2010, leading to another Vendy Award nomination.

Jerome served two of his most popular desserts – warm chocolate bread pudding with vanilla custard sauce and buttermilk panna cotta with cassis compote and pine nuts.  We loved the warm chocolate bread pudding.  We didn’t try the panna cotta, but several people I spoke with during the day raved about it. Excellent work Jerome and crew.

Guerrilla's 72% chocolate and port wine ice cream

Guerrilla Ice Cream was new to the Vendys this year – and they showed they deserve to be here.  Ethan Frisch and Ori Zohar create gourmet ice cream and toppings based on p;olitical movements.

I tasted the 72% chocolate and port wine ice cream topped with a bruleed banana and cashews, which was inspired by the Guinea-Bissau revolution.  It was wonderful!

They also had a lemon poppy seed ice cream topped with crumbled spice cookies and lemon zest, which was inspired by the Czech Republic Velvet Revolution.  Excellente Ethan and Ori!

Yao's Dragon Beard Candy

The last Vendy Award finalist in the dessert category was Yao Ai Kui of Yao’s Dragon Beard Candy.  They pulled sugar into lace-thin strips and rolled them around peanuts and coconut.  We had some dragon beard candy in Chinatown a week ago, and enjoyed it very much.

Yao's Dragon Beard Candy

Everyone in the Vendy Award Dessert category was amazing.  Congratulations to Alex and all the Vendy Award finalists.

To read more about the Vendy Award winners in each category, click here.

To read more about the Vendy Award main category finalists, click here.

To read more about the Vendy Award Rookie of the Year finalists, click here.

]]> http://newyorkstreetfood.com/10209/vendy-awards-2010-the-dessert-category/feed/ 1 http://newyorkstreetfood.com/8446/food-truck-festivals-in-nyc-boston-this-weekend/ http://newyorkstreetfood.com/8446/food-truck-festivals-in-nyc-boston-this-weekend/#comments Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:48:37 +0000 admin http://newyorkstreetfood.com/?p=8446

New and repeat food truck festivals are taking place this weekend in NYC and Boston.

In an encore performance of a very successful debut, the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market is having another Gourmet Food Truck Bazaar…and Boston is holding it’s 1st Annual Food Truck Festival.

Eat, Shop, Love!  This weekend spend a leisurely Sunday eating and shopping at the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market.  Check out a few of our favorite gourmet food trucks.

The Line Up: Rickshaw Dumpling Truck, The Krave Truck, Bistro Truck, Go Burger, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck

And don’t forget the amazing treasure finds from our  vintage flea market vendors!  Sunday, August 8, 2010 from 11am to 4pm

Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market – West 39th Street between 9th and 10th Avenue. [website]

If you thought Boston didn’t have a food truck scene?  Well, the revolution starts NOW.  In conjunction with SoWa Sundays (and merci to a micro-grant from FEAST), citysearch boston will pull all the stops to ensure that — for at least one afternoon — local food trucks will stand together in solidarity and thing-on-a-stick-y.

The first annual Food Truck Festival in Boston is being held this Sunday (8th)  – where vroom vroom meets nomnomnom.  Confirmed participants include:  speed’s hot dogs, m&m ribs, lincoln street coffee, dragon mobile disco, taza chococycle, south end pita, boston frosty, fillbelly’s, cupcakory, herrara’s mexican grill, food truck nation, equal exchange coffee trike, grillo’s pickles, the sausage guy, roxy’s grilled cheese, b. good and trolley dogs.

The festival is at SoWa Food & Produce at 500 Harrison Ave, South End, Boston from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. [facebook page]

If you missed your chance to be on Eat St yesterday, a show being filmed this week in NYC for Food Network Canada,  you have 2 more chances.

They were filming at the Schnitzel & Things truck yesterday, and last night we heard from Blondie, who will be the “street food expert” being interviewed at the Biryani Cart (above) today around lunch.  Try to make it down to the Biryani Cart today if you can.  It’s on the SW corner of 46th St & 6th Ave.

Your last chance is tomorrow, when they will be filming at the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck on the NW corner of Broadway at 17th St from 1-3pm.  I will be one of the “street food experts” being interviewed, along with Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats.  Come on by and say hello (and possibly be on Food Network Canada).