I first met New Orleans Ice Cream Company's chocolate ice cream when I tasted the fudge-filled flavor, Mississippi Debris. The influx of various chocolate mix-ins made it nearly impossible to fully appreciate the base ice cream. Instead of stuffing as many mix-ins inside as they could, with Chocolate City, they've only included shards of white chocolate chips. Poking fun at the post Hurricane Katrina speech of former New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin, New Orleans Ice Cream Company has even found a way to incorporate their beloved city into a simple chocolate ice cream.
Touching on subjects such as civil rights, race and violence in his Martin Luther King, Jr. Day's speech, Mayor Nagin's rhetoric offended many given the circumstances in New Orleans. Nearly two thirds of the city was African-American before Katrina, but after the hurricane most of the predominately caucasian neighborhoods were the only ones still habitable in the city. Claiming to talk to the African American community, Nagin said to the crowds, "And I don't care what people are saying in Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day." Later he added, "This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans."
Using the mayor's poor choice of words as inspiration, this rather tame looking first layer shows only slight signs of the white chocolate chips hiding below. The simplicity and lack of mix-ins allowed me to fully appreciate their Vanilla Bean, so I'm expecting that to be the case with Chocolate City as well. The smorgasbord of chocolate-covered and filled ingredients inside Mississippi Debris made it nearly impossible to concentrate on the chocolate base. As I dug into the light-brown ice cream, the denseness coincided with the nutrition label. Coming in at 300 calories per serving, this is a heavy, high-butterfat base.
This thick, densely packed ice cream is bursting with milk chocolate. As it lingers on your taste buds, the flavors slowly melt into a well executed classic. Even though it's not overly complex, their chocolate base is more than capable of keeping my attention for an extended period. After enjoying only a few bites, I begin to encounter tons of these tiny white chocolate chunks. As I've said before, I'm usually opposed to any type of chocolate chunks in ice cream due to the rock-hard consistency they carry, but these pieces of white chocolate are sized just perfectly. They remain soft enough to avoid breaking any teeth and melt away quickly, leaving behind the unique taste of high quality white chocolate.
Combining a standard chocolate chunk with the milk chocolate ice cream could have resulted in a flavor too rich, but utilizing the white chocolate allows this pint to go down with ease. Chocolate doesn't necessarily scream New Orleans, but by poking fun at the warranted misfortune of their former mayor, they've made this flavor uniquely theirs.
Where I Found It: Ice Cream Source
Grade: C
