Ice Monster is tame and tasty
In the broad genre of monsters from Godzilla to Sharknado, it is wonderful to meet a monster that is cheerful, clean, polite and eager to please. I am referring not to some cave- dwelling dragon but to the relatively new ice cream store on Federal Road across from Stew Leonard’s in Danbury.
I have visited this specialty shop a number of times and am always in awe at what a pleasant experience it is. The menu is minimalist, not monstrous. The only monster in sight is a huge, red teddy bear placed on the floor, ready for cuddles.
Ice Monster is a storefront that serves only two things: Thai ice cream and bubble tea. Bubble tea ( if you have not tried it before) is a very strange concoction consisting of sweet, flavored powdered tea base mixed with about half a cup of bloated brown tapioca pearls. You sip it through a jumbo wide straw that allows the tapioca to slip up to your mouth without getting stuck. It is hard for me to describe bubble tea without making it sound like something you would be made to drink blindfolded at a fraternity hazing. So just enjoy it and don’t get hung up on the soft tapioca pearls which, when I was a kid, were called “fish eyes” and came in bland puddings that seemed like punishment.
Recently having visited Seattle, it seemed that Bubble Tea had taken over as the beverage of choice. Seattle has an enormous Asian population and to get the finest Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Chinese and Japanese food around requires little more then to walk out the front of your front door and walk a block left or right. It is not going out on a limb to say there is no bad Asian food in Seattle.
So because of the glut of Asian eateries you will easily find Bubble Tea pretty much everywhere. Most residents have their favorites, some like the wildly artificially colored drinks, others the minimalist version, less psychedelic in color but still classic. The Bubble Tea at Ice Monster falls right in the middle of the spectrum. I ordered Watermelon Bubble Tea which was a pretty pink liquid floating above a goodly amount of dark brown tapioca pearls. I would say it was the equal in quality to any I had on the West Coast.
But the true reason to visit Ice Monster is for the Thai Ice Cream. I had never experienced this delicacy before, and was fascinated by watching how it is made. It is truly something you can’t do at home unless you are a mechanical genius and can reproduce a freezing metal surface onto which the ingredients are poured and then have the knife skills to turn a puddle of cream into five symmetrical frozen tubes.
There are about a dozen choices on the whiteboard menu. Some are over the top wild, others modest and lactose free. I ordered four sundaes and would order any of them again. As good as they are, watching how they are made is half the fun.
Like most things Asian ( and writer Marie Kondos’ ironclad rules on tidying up your home comes to mind), these sundaes are not gooey, drippy or messy. They are as precise as origami. The way they are made is that the ingredients you order are placed on a freezing cold metal circle. Using both hands, the chef chops them very fine. The cream is poured on the circle in a puddle. It immediately freezes and the man smooths it out horizontally and then vertically. Once the ice cream has reached the correct consistency, he takes a short spatula and scrapes the ice cream geometrically into five surgically neat tubes and them in a paper bowl.
The idea of impeccably neat ice cream may be an oxymoron, but at Ice Monster it works. This stuff will not drip down your arm or gush all over your face. Emily Post and Miss Manners would give it an Aplus.
Some of my favorite combinations are S’mores Galore, a chocolate marshmallow mix with a nice plump marshmallow on a wooden stick that has been scorched until it sizzled. If you are a coffee fiend, you will be wise to try a I Love You Latte, a simple but totally Vietnamese combo of coffee and condensed milk. For exotic mixtures try the Matcha Made in Heaven a combo made of green tea and red bean puree. If I had one to choose from, I would order a Monkey Business, a child happy mash of bananas and a big wad of Nutella that terrific chocolate/ hazelnut topping.
Although you are getting a simple bowl of ice cream ( exotic, made just for you, and a visual and edible treat) be prepared to spend $ 7 for it. Yes, you can buy a pint of premium ice cream for that amount of money, but it will not be as much fun.