A post about an ice cream shop seems ill-timed right now, but the Van Leeuwen shop is really more of a beautiful cafe. It’s a gorgeous space on 7th street in the East Village, the result of a very successful ice cream truck (whose success also had a lot to do with aesthetics, specifically their iconic butter-yellow trucks, as an owner noted in a NYT article on expensive ice cream). The first shop opened in Brooklyn, but this is the first I’ve seen and everything about it is lovely: raw-cut wood tables, custom-made botanical wallpaper (to match their menu), loads of records stacked by a turn-table…
I have yet to order ice cream there (despite how tempting I find the list of rotating flavors), but they have made it onto my own informal list of best places for a latte in the East Village (something, you might recall, I have been studying up on recently). They also sometimes have a very delicious browned-butter, hazelnut cake in their pastry case. I keep meaning to try something else, but it’s just so good!
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