It's no secret that pickles are having a major moment, but Jacob Hadjigeorgis, owner of Jacob's Pickles and Maison Pickle in New York City and Glenroy Brown, the restaurants' executive chef, have been in the pickle game for years. According to Chef Brown, Jacob's Pickles, which opened in 2011, has nine different pickled items on its menu, including pickled eggs. Now, however, Hadjigeorgis and Brown are following the current pickle trend by releasing their own pickle-flavored food. At the duo's newest restaurant Lucky Pickle Dumpling Co., pickle soft serve ice cream is on the menu.
There were a few different reasons behind the introduction of pickle soft serve at Lucky Pickle Dumpling Co. For starters, Brown and Hadjigeorgis wanted to put soft serve on the menu to tap into nostalgia. "We wanted to have something that reflected our childhood memories," Chef Brown tells Refinery29. Once they knew they wanted to offer soft serve, the pickle flavor just made sense. "We’re known for our pickle recipes and in both of our other restaurants, we have pickles as one of our staple items on the menu, so this was sort of a no-brainer." Chef Brown says.
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In addition to nostalgia and brand cohesion, Brown and Hadjigeorgis thought pickle ice cream would compliment Lucky Pickle Dumpling Co's cuisine well as a palate cleanser. "Most of our food on the menu is a little bit spicier because it’s Asian, so we wanted something lighter, more crisp, and cucumber-flavored soft serve just came to mind from both of us." says Chef Brown.
That's right, according to Chef Brown, the main ingredient in the soft serve is actually fresh-pressed cucumber. With that being the case, you may be wondering if the decision to call the offering pickle soft serve instead of cucumber soft serve was made purely as a way to draw in customers with a trend. Well, we got a chance to the new pickle soft serve at Lucky Pickle Dumpling Co., and it turns out there is a hint of pickle flavor.
The overall taste of the new trendy new soft serve is light and fresh like a cucumber, which made it especially refreshing on an unseasonably hot early May afternoon in New York City. The treat also has a tang to it, which makes it taste similar to a half-sour pickle, or a pickled cucumber that spends only a short amount of time in its brine. With that tang, it makes perfect sense to give the soft serve the trendy name. Plus, with Jacob Hadjigeorgis and Glenroy Brown's well-established pickle expertise behind it, the soft serve deserves its moniker.