Coconut Vanilla Bean, Mexican Spiced Chocolate, Honey Lavender, Chocolate Chip Cookie and even Mint Chocolate Chip are just a few of the decadent vegan flavors of "ice cream" you will find at STOGO in the East Village of NYC.
Celebrity Cool - in more ways than one. Co-owned by actress Kyra Sedgwick's brother, Rob Sedgwick and Rob Horn, this brand spanking new "ice-cream" shop took quite a risk opening in the dead of a very chilly NYC winter. But each time I have visited, the place has been packed with intrigued vegans and non-vegans alike.
What drew me in? I'll admit, the NYMAG Grub Street post and bloggarazzi photos of Kyra and Kevin Bacon chowing down on vegan ice cream-winter coats and all. Cheesy photo-op, but it certainly started the foodies buzzing. But the big question: Does STOGO get the job done?
Is its vegan ice creaminess yummy????
My review and more photos of STOGO ahead....
STOGO VEGAN NON-DAIRY ICE CREAM SHOP, NYC
Shelf-Appeal: Adorable, brightly-lit shop, right across the street from St. Mark's Church. Nice window-seat bar, not a lot of table seating though. (Summer is going to be crowded!) Nice selection. They even have soft-serve and Babycakes bakery goods.
Label Check: 100% vegan, dairy-free. Some flavors contain a soy milk base, others contain a coconut milk base. Drastically lower in saturated fat than ice cream or gelato. Fresh fruit and natural flavor combos. Natural ingredients. Yippee!
Taste Test: This is soy? This is vegan? Wow. My first big surprise taste was the creaminess and softness of the texture. Yet it is still incredibly rich and thick, like a gelato more than an ice cream! The Coconut Vanilla Bean and Chocolate Chip Cookie are my favorites. Although the Mango Banana and Mexican Spiced Chocolate are also impressive. Biggest wow: It is leagues above any store bought soy ice cream I have ever tried. ...Which quite frankly shocked me because I adore a few store brands.
Price: Not cheap. But good ice cream never is. About the same price as I would pay for a perfect laboratorio del gelato sorbet. Two large packed pints is about $19.
Last Word: I better save up my dessert change for the warm summer nights ahead. (It's freezing outside and I'm still eating this stuff.) Watch out gelato, vegan-cream is predictably the summer 2009 trend.
STOGO
159 Second Avenue (on East 10th Street across from st Mark's Church)
212.677.2301
MENU:
Coffee, tea, Babycakes bakery goodies, chocolates, ice cream and soft serve.
WEBSITE: http://www.stogonyc.com/
Anonymous says
Have you tried Lula's sweet apothecary on 6th btw a & b? I've been to both Lula's and STOGO, and after trying Lula's, nothing compares.
Mark says
Thanks for the info... I agree with you that it's healthier, but, pesonally, I wouldn't call it healthy.
That small serving is around 1/3 of the total fat recommended by Drs. Ornish and Esselstyn per day to facilitate reverse or prevent heart disease.
But compared to a lot of so-called healthy organic salad dressings where one serving (2 TBL) is in excess of 14 grams of fat, if I needed to choose: I'd tgo for the vegan ice cream... does sound tasty.
To each his/her own!
Sincere best regards, Mark
Kathy says
Mark,
Thanks for your comment. This was one review of the health facts that I read on yelp:
" I asked the girl scooping my small cup of pomegranate chocolate chip if she had any idea of what the calorie count was and she said that all she knew was that the same size scoop of traditional ice cream would be around 16 grams of fat and Stogo's was only 6 grams, which isn't bad at all." -Margs K. on Yelp http://www.yelp.com/biz/stogo-new-york
Kathy
Mark says
Since their website has no nutritional information for their vegan ice cream, there's no validation that their ice cream is , as you write, "drastically lower" in fat or calories than a dairy equivalent.
Furthermore, if they are using coconut milk, then the ice cream is probably higher in fat/calories than a whole milk equivalent.
To wit: 57 grams of fat are in just 1 cup of coconut milk (a whole days worth of fat according to the Feds):
http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-coconut-milk-i12117
Whole soy milk, too, has a high fat to calories ratio, but significantly less than coconut milk.
If you've been able to source the nutritional breakdown of their ice creams, I'd love to see it. As I noted earlier, there's no nutritional information on their website (yet).
As such, "drastically lower in fat/calories" might be a bit of a stretch, especially without any proof.
FYI, Mark