The late Victorians – Agnes B. Marshall among them – jived so resolutely with the myth of eternal return that they doubtless would be proud to see some of their culinary techniques at work today at Ices Plain & Fancy, one of newest, and zaniest, storefronts for a sweet tooth at 2256 S. 39th St.
Marshall, who pioneered a series of dessert-making techniques in 19th-century London before her premature demise, has been pulled from obscurity by college chums Troika Brodsky (communications director at Schlafly), Darla Crask, Max Crask (former executive chef at Tripel) and Matthew Deutschmann, who opened the shop together in late July.
At first glance, the corner ice cream shop in the Shaw neighborhood is a modest little boutique, with mosaic tile floors and a large portrait of Marshall hanging on the wall, along with a few blown-up pages selected from her oeuvre of culinary books. Ices Plain & Fancy is a title of Marshall’s, borrowed for the name of the shop. All of it belies the positively weird science going on inside the kitchen.
Exhibit A: the 5-foot industrial liquid nitrogen tanks standing behind the glass-walled ice cream bar. At less than 321 degrees below zero, the dangerously cold liquid nitrogen is piped through a nozzle and poured directly into Nitro Ices, ice cream made to order in stainless stand mixers while you watch from behind the glass. The nitrogen freezes the cream rapidly enough to prevent the formation of ice crystals, resulting in an ultra-smooth, silky texture. (And don’t be alarmed – the nitrogen evaporates harmlessly when mixed with the cream.)
Though Ices hasn’t even thrown a grand opening celebration, the magic is spreading. Lines are starting to accumulate around the corner, and the staff already goes through a tank of nitrogen a day.
The Nitro Ices are offered in around seven rotating flavors, each of which can be made vegan with soy ingredients. They can be served in a cup, cake cone or a house-made waffle cone. Also on the menu is vanilla-flavored soft serve ice cream and Sump Pump, soft serve infused with “an obscene amount” of Sump Coffee’s Ethiopian roast, according to Crask. A special flavor of Nitro Ice and sorbet are rotated every couple days, and behind the counter, a refrigerator holds a generous selection of artisan sodas, including Virgil’s Root Beer, Cheerwine, Fitz’s and more.
Ever the experimenters, the owners are in the process of acquiring a liquor license for making booze-infused ice cream. And while ice cream is the only offering at the moment, the prospect of other food appearing on the menu isn’t far off the horizon, Brodsky said. Before they can take on that challenge, the madcap ice cream quartet has their hands full performing their peculiar brand of science theater, like some scene from those turn-of-the-century fairs in London, or St. Louis, their encircled clientele observing in wide-eyed wonder.
-photos by Michelle Volansky
This article appears in August 2014.