"Coolhaus co-founders Natasha Case and Freya Estreller started baking cookies, making ice cream, and combining them into "cool houses" in 2008. With mutual backgrounds in the design and real estate fields, they began naming their ice cream sandwiches after architects and architectural movements that inspired them - and eventually decided to take their newfound passion (dubbed "Farchitecture," or Food + Architecture) to their hometown streets in Los Angeles. So after a few days on Craigslist (and some time convincing their families they weren't crazy), they found and bought a beat-up old postal van, trekked out to the world-famous Coachella Valley Music Festival in April 2009 to make their debut, and, well...the rest is history. Now, Coolhaus operates a national fleet of 11 mobile ice cream trucks and carts (5 in Southern California, 3 in NYC, 2 in Austin, and 1 in Dallas).. Fans can also visit Coolhaus at its two Southern California-based storefronts in Culver City and Pasadena, or pick up a pre-packaged ice cream sandwich, pint of ice cream, or hand-dipped ice cream bar at one of 1,500+ gourmet markets in over 40 states."
Coolhaus has taken the country by storm in the past few years. The skeptic in me had been wondering whether or not they were all style and no substance. Since Straub's, a local gourmet market, began carrying five of their prepackaged pints this year, I finally had the opportunity to find out. The pint you see pictured is "Mintimalism : Our signature Dirty Mint Chip ice cream, just fresh mint, brown sugar and semi-sweet chips".
Mintimalism / Dirty Mint Chip isn't the first flavor I reached for. I'm not a huge fan of mint ice cream. I tend to prefer mint flavors with plenty of thin mint cookie pieces mixed in for texture, or I'll add my own. What Coolhaus did with this flavor, though, left me quite satisfied. I would never have guessed it, but this turned out to be my favorite of the five. The others are most enjoyable, but it is hard for me to reach past this one! It's just that good.
As you see in the pictures, specks of fresh mint dot the landscape along with a gazillion semi-sweet chips. The combination of mint, chocolate chips and an extremely well-textured, luscious base are all that is needed for a solid A.
Where Elliot Found It: Straub's Market
Elliot's Grade: A
