Graza

Q: How do you describe yourself?

B: I am an optimistic, curious, and hyperactive person. Also, very passionate for better or worse. 

Q: Finish this sentence, cooking for me is...

B: Well, as I get older and busier, I find that I don't cook as much, so home cooking feels like the greatest luxury to me now. 

Q: Take us through your perfect day of NYC eats. 

B: One of my favorite coffee shops in New York City is Abracao on Seventh Street and 1st Ave. I also enjoy their pastries and appreciate that they offer everything into stay cups. Sometimes when I'm working at my ice cream shop down the street they let me take the cup with me and I'll bring it back. If I'm staying in the East Village neighborhood and not in one of my vegetarian phases, I will go around the corner to Rowdy Rooster and get one of the best fried chicken sandwiches that is full of Indian spices and hot sauce. Another lunch spot I love is By Chloe, the vegan burger is amazing.

If I'm back in my home neighborhood of Greenpoint I love Shamata for dinner, everything is delicious. Super good vibe, nice wines. If I'm just doing drinks Achilles Heel in deep Greenpoint has fantastic drinks, a wood-burning stove in the winter, and very nice food out of a teeny kitchen. For Mexican food, I love Oxomco. For a very fancy meal, it's hard to beat Jean George's on Central park, which was the first fine dining experience of my life 20 years ago. 

And for breakfast I would go to K'far Cafe in the Hoxton Hotel in Williamsburg or Cafe Mogador. I love Mediterranean for breakfast. 

Q: What can we always find in your pantry at home? An ingredient you can't live without in everyday cooking.

B: Salsa Macha- I love spicy and I love the smoky slightly crunchy spicy. I use it on pasta, eggs, sandwiches etc. 

Q: Are there any ice cream flavors you don't like? What about a flavor that you didn't think you would love but did?

B: Early on in my ice cream making, I was amazed at how adding almost any cheese or fermented dairy product to ice cream was delicious. Sour cream, blue cheese, parmesan, cheddar, mac & cheese powder...They all work wonderfully in ice cream. Basically you're making custard with the cheese and delivering it in a sweet rather than salty format. What's not to love! 

Q: How do you feel about olive oil on ice cream? What Van Leeuwen flavor would you pair with a drizzle of EVOO?

B: It's very nice. It adds another layer of flavor and a light fat that helps carry flavor. I would put it on our Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream. 

Q: Do you have a most memorable scoop or moment that you come back to when thinking about your time creating Van Leeuwen's Ice Cream?

B: Yes, in 2008 we had just spent a year developing our flavors and tasted thousands of different versions. But, it was not until our first day in business after scooping for six hours straight, very hungry, that I made myself a banana split with chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream, hot fudge, walnuts, a ripe banana, and whipped cream; I realized how delicious ice cream made with just cream, eggs, milk, and sugar and great ingredients was. I was very excited in that moment because I was standing in the ice cream truck and we had set out to make great products but serve them in a really approachable old-fashioned way-the ice cream truck-and I really felt like we had delivered on that. 

Q: If you could develop flavors for or create a new product, what would it be? 

B: I’ll give a fun answer and a fancy answer: I love chocolate, and I love mass market candy bars, with that said I would love them even more if they were a little bit less sweet and a little bit more chocolatey. So a dream I have is to create slightly fancier, candy bars, nothing too fancy though not like a $15 candy bar, but like a candy bar that costs three dollars instead of two dollars. The fancier new product would be a dessert restaurant concept that ranges from almost no sugar in desserts to increasing levels of sugar for the last course with some alcohol as well. I don’t think we’ll ever do this because it would be almost impossible to be commercially successful.

Q: What's on the horizon for you?

B: We are opening the Van Leeuwen Flavor Lab in early spring 2025. A flavor lab is an innovation kitchen, a tasting room and an ice cream shop in the front. All of the research and development for the entire Van Leeuwen company will happen out of this laboratory and much of what we test will be served in real time to guests who visit us there. I am so excited about this, not only to have a better space to research and develop out of, but to be connecting this central process in our business directly to our guests. We will get feedback in real time and have a lot of fun doing it.