New City Microcreamery: Scientific Take on Classic Dessert Falls Flat

Sick of plain-old vanilla and age-old chocolate? New City Microcreamery's Cambridge location is complete with a variety of eclectic flavors. Founded in 2015, New City Microcreamery was even voted the Best Ice Cream in Massachusetts in 2018. This ice cream chain boasts a unique twist: products made with liquid nitrogen. After steeping and infusing their ice cream bases for 24 hours, the base is slowly mixed while liquid nitrogen is poured in to freeze it, a process intended to create a better texture. There are two additional locations in Hudson and Sudbury.

The Cambridge location offers an impressive array of 25 different flavors, from classics such as Vanilla and Cookies n’ Cream to novelty flavors such as Mocha Blanca Raspberry and Chocolate Almond Croissant. There are also dairy-free options available, such as Vegan Chocolate and Cherry Chip Sorbet. Brightly lit with a handful of tables and lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling and a red neon sign by its ice cream selection, the shop is charmingly vintage. With covers of ’70s and ’80s music playing in the background, diners can sit and enjoy their newly-frozen treats before they melt. The staff is friendly and welcoming, providing a generous number of samples from the impressive 25 flavors offered at the Cambridge location. New City Creamery offers normal sized scoops along with a slightly smaller “kiddie size.” One regular scoop is $5.25, while two are $7.75. Kiddie pricing is $4.25 and $6.75. Toppings, however, do cost an additional $1. Compared to other ice cream shops in the area that limit sampling ice cream flavors, the staff were particularly friendly and inviting, with constant smiles and more than happy to let customers taste-test.

Despite the glitz and glamor afforded by the liquid nitrogen process, the ice cream proved decidedly unremarkable and isn’t anything to write home about. The Peanut Butter Brownie, consisting of a peanut-butter based ice cream studded with small, brittle pieces of brownie and chocolate, lacked a strong peanut butter flavor, making for an unmemorable combination. Ruthless, a flavor with whole peanuts and chocolate flavoring from the classic BabyRuth™ halloween candy, brought on a childhood nostalgia unlike an ordinary ice cream flavor, yet the chocolate ice cream itself is overpoweringly sweet. Baklava, an ice cream with honey and cinnamon mixed with walnut strudel flaky phyllo dough that perfectly mimics the classic desert, did shine as a warm, spicy blend. However, others such as Don’t Be Salty, a sweet cream base with chocolate-covered potato chips and salted caramel, were cloyingly sweet and did not taste particularly different from a generic pint of salted caramel.

However, the greatest problems lay not with the flavor but the texture. Ice cream making heavily emphasizes precision and texture, and New City Microcreamery cites both in their process. Ice cream is ordinarily chilled and churned, and simply freezing the ice cream base would not produce its signature creamy texture. Chilling and churning prevents small “seed” crystals of water from attaching to each other, preventing the ice cream from getting grainy and diluted. Unfortunately, many of the New City Microcreamery’s flavors were unmistakably grainy and full of ice bits. Liquid nitrogen, which boils at -320F (-196C), is so cold that it freezes the ice cream base near instantaneously upon contact. This method is used since the flash freeze is supposedly so quick that water molecules cannot form large ice crystals, meaning that the blend of cream, sugar, and mix-ins produces a solid ice cream with microscopic ice crystals and an especially smooth texture. Yet curiously, three of the sampled flavors felt more akin to shaved ice than traditional ice cream. Lacking one of the main appeals of liquid nitrogen ice cream, New City Microcreamery is not particularly strong in either flavor or texture.

Ultimately, with other ice cream shops such as Toscanini's Ice Cream and Lizzy's Ice Cream just a minute away, the novelty of New City Microcreamery, despite its name’s suggestion, fades quickly.