Scoops 5 New York City Entry #33

Although I imagined that my previous entry on New York ice cream until the spring, I found myself in Highwood (aka Upper Washington Heights or Hudson Heights), visiting the Cloisters and getting a gasp of autumn leaves in Fort Tryon Park, the acre-for-acre the most beautiful park in Manhattan.

On West 187th Street is a cute little ice cream parlor (an "Ice Cream and Treatery"), cutely named YumLicious, run by two young women (Millie and Ana). They make their own super-premium ice cream, and it is comparable in consistency with such downtown stars as Cones or Ottos. Some flavors specifically appeal to a Latin audience: Bizcocho (ice cream with bits of cake), dulce de leche, cake batter, almond, guava, and passion fruit. Among their gelatos are blanco and nero, and strawberry variegata. Sorbets include tropical fruit and grapefruit.

The bizcocho was extravagantly delicious, rich, smooth, and like a cool, creamed sponge cake. The cake batter was fine, but was not as dramatic as the bizcocho. Guava was an excellent melding of fruit and cream, but the fruit flavors were muted, unlike the deeply pungent tropical fruit sorbet.

Washington Heights has much to recommend it as a culinary destination (Gideon's Bakery across the street with quite good Rugalach), and then Dominican neighborhoods to the north (207th Street in Inwood) and to the south (175th Street in Washington Heights). I headed north, just down the hill from the Cloisters, located by Inwood Park, the closest that Manhattan has to a forest (filled with caves).

For lunch I selected El Lina where I ordered a sublime shrimp asopao: a rice and shrimp soup with garlic and cilantro (and where one portion will provide me with three meals). A suggestion from Robert Sietsema's Food Lover's Guide to the Best Ethnic Eating in New York City. Delicious.

YumLicious
803 West 187th Street at Fort Washington Avenue
Manhattan (Highwood)
212-927-1400

Note: YumLicious will close for the winter in the middle of November, opening again in March 2006.

Gideon's Bakery
810 West 187th Street at Fort Washington Avenue
Manhattan (Highwood)
212-927-9262

El Lina
500 West 207th Street at 10th Avenue
Manhattan (Inwood)
no phone