Coolhaus - the ice cream truck that puts Mr. Softee to shame

On the third Sunday of every month this summer, Prospect Park has been hosting a food truck rally, with some of the city's most loved food trucks congregating in the front of the park near Grand Army Plaza.  This past Sunday I ventured over to Park Slope to see what this rally was all about.

Now, I'm aware of the food truck craze that's taken over the city in the last few years.  I've seen the multitude of Yogo trucks in practically every neighborhood in both Manhattan and Brooklyn.  However, I'm usually a passerby, opting to eat my meals in establishments with a roof and a seat.  But people rave about some of this food truck food, so I had to give it a try.

There are about 28 food trucks that rotate at this monthly event (which will only run through October so be sure to make it there September 16th or October 21st).  This week, after carefully evaluating our options, we decided to give Coolhaus a try.  Coolhaus has a fun concept - creating a custom ice cream sandwich with both unique cookie and ice cream flavors.

The cookies come from Ovenly, who have a store location in Greenpoint and sell their baked goods at numerous location across Brooklyn and Manhattan.  The cookies themselves will receive a separate blog entry, because not only were they amazing but I just added them to my list last week before realizing they were affiliated with Coolhaus!  There are about 60 flavors of ice cream, none of which include your plain old chocolate or vanilla.  Coolhaus offers flavors such as molten chocolate cake, bananas foster, beer & pretzels, and sweet potato & marshmallow.  Here's a full list of flavors for your reference: FLAVORS

The cookies include some classics like double chocolate chip and peanut butter, but also have fun flavors like red velvet, potato chip & butterscotch and snickerdoodle.  There are gluten-free and vegan options too!

On this particular trip, I tried the double chocolate chip cookie with Dirty Mint ice cream (fresh mint ice cream, semisweet chocolate chips & a hint of brown sugar).  For $6, you get a scoop of the ice cream served between two cookies, wrapped in edible calorie-free paper.  The calorie-free paper part actually made me laugh, since the Sammie probably had about 800 calories in itself.  Despite that (hey - today was a gym day!) I LOVED this ice cream sandwich.  The cookies were definitely on the super sweet side, and I shockingly was only able to eat half of the sandwich, but it was well worth every bite.  You could taste how fresh the mint was in the ice cream. The cookies were hard enough to hold the sandwich, but soft enough to be able to easily bite into it.

Coolhaus got it's start back in 2008, when the founders Natasha and Freya began making ice cream and baking cookies in interesting combinations, naming the flavor combos after architects and architectual movements that inspired them.  The girls decided the best way to get their Sammies out to the public was by a food truck, so in 2009 they bought an ice cream truck in LA and showed up at Coachella with their fun flavored sandwiches.  People loved it, word spread, and now you can find Coolhaus trucks in NY, LA, Miami, Austin and Dallas.

For New Yorkers, aside from the food truck, you can find Coolhaus creations in assorted stores throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and even Citifield (including Brooklyn Fare, the market across the street from my house!)  Although the best way to experience it is prepared fresh with the flavors of your choosing.  Coolhaus can be followed on Twitter and Facebook to find their daily locations.  They also make appearances at different concert venues, including ACL in Austin and the Electric Zoo festival at Randall's Island.

You can follow them on Twitter @Coolhaus.  Or @CoolhausNY.  Or whatever other city you live in that I mentioned above.  But since I don't actually know how to use Twitter, I'm not sure that what I just wrote is correct.  Maybe it involves a hashtag.  Maybe this is easier: www.eatcoolhaus.com