Just

Just
when you thought ice cream was falling off the radar,
Van
Leeuwen has made it exciting again. Since the Van Leeuwen
brothers began selling their artisan ice cream from
buttercup-yellow vans in 2008, the childlike excitement that goes
hand in hand with a waffle cone has stirred in New York City again.
The first Van Leeuwen truck arrived on the scene seven years ago
and the brand quickly amassed a following for their fresh ice cream
prepared with a simple base of milk, cream, cane sugar, eggs and an
array of high-grade flavours.

“No one was serving anything special,” BenVan Leeuwen, who
started out selling ice cream sticks for old-school brand Good
Humor, tells us. “It was all just soft serve. There was a gap in
the market for real scooped ice cream with real ingredients that
you could feel good about eating.”

Only a year after Van Leeuwen’s conception, Bon Appétit
Magazine placed the delicious ice cream in their list of the
Top 10 Ice Cream Shops in the United States. Meanwhile, their
simple, high quality recipes continued to draw in the fans.

“What we’re doing here is really just a simple retake of a very
tried and true concept,” LauraO’Neill, co-founder of Van Leeuwen,
says. Take their best-selling vanilla – made with bourbon and
Tahitian pods grown in Papua New Guinea – or their hazelnut
variety, created using Piedmont nuts which, we are told, are
‘simply the best on earth’. From Indonesian palm sugar to
redcurrants grown in the Hudson Valley and chocolate sourced from a
family-run chocolatier in France, Van Leeuwen is dedicated to
hunting down the best possible ingredients for their luxurious ice
cream. You only need to taste the stuff to understand the
difference that high-calibre ingredients make. There isn’t a single
counterfeit vanilla speckle in sight…

Bearing all of this in mind, it was no surprise to find Van
Leeuwen’s newest Brooklyn café, which opened in January, brimming
with ice cream guzzlers despite the below-freezing winds outside.
The factor that separates Van Leeuwen from other ice cream brands
is its dedication to simplicity; a focus upon quality rather than
radical recipes. “You need to do things because you’re inspired by
them, not to be part of a trend,” Laura says, “because eventually,
trends always become over-saturated.”

Every batch of ice cream is crafted from scratch in their
Greenpoint kitchen, and goes out to four cafés spread around New
York. Each one is as bright as the last, with turntables piping out
soft music to the constant flood of customers. The vans that have
stayed tucked away during New York’s brutal winter months will soon
be resurfacing for spring, while two brand new ones zip around
sunny L.A. throughout the year. On top of that, the trio will be
releasing a cookbook in June, with over 100 ice cream recipes to
try out.

In short, Van Leeuwen has single-handedly made ice cream cool
again. “It is such an innocent purchase – ice cream is just about
pure enjoyment,” Ben explains. “It’s about making yourself happy in
that one moment.”

We met up with Laura and Ben to learn more about what makes this
small batch company tick, before diving headfirst into a salted
caramel and hot fudge sundae. All for the purpose of research,
obviously.

THE CURIOUS PEAR: How do you come up with flavour ideas?

LAURA: There’s not really a
method to it beyond just thinking that something sounds delicious.
From there, we just make sure we find the best possible
ingredients.

BEN: This sounds so cliché, but a lot of the
flavours that I like the most will just pop into my head while I’m
meditating. We’re currently looking to make the menu more
structured, bringing it into season a little more. We also want to
do collaborations with other chefs. We’re currently in talks with
Tara from Okonomi, she has some really exciting ideas for Japanese
flavours. They’re going to be a little crazy, we’re so excited.

CP: Do you think it’s better to go all-out on the sugar/fat
content when making ice cream, to make it taste as good as
possible?

L: Yes and no. Our ice cream is very simple;
it’s milk, cane sugar and egg yolks. We use a high butter content
so that we don’t have to stabilise it with other things. But we
like it to be less sweet than most ice creams, because then you can
really taste the flavours without it being cloying. We’re always
trying to improve.

B: The goal is just making it as delicious as
possible. Ultimately, ice cream should be a treat. Modern
consumption habits mean we feel like we should be able to have as
much of things as possible, so people leap at ‘no fat’/’no sugar’
products because they see it as an opportunity to eat a lot of
something. But actually, if you limit how much sweet food you eat,
you enjoy it so much more. We want to be that place you come to for
that feeling.

CP: Where did you learn to make ice cream?

B: Ice cream really isn’t very complex. We were
always avid cooks and just taught ourselves.

L: The ingredients we wanted to use always
dictated the method. There was always a lot of trial and error as
we tweaked the formula. For example, the most popular flavour is
vanilla, so we just worked really hard on making it really special.
We use two types of vanilla bean, so it’s really complex in
flavour. Then when we were making pistachio, rather than adding any
weird flavourings we just sought out the best pistachios on earth
to create it with.

B: Our main focus has always been to make
really simple flavours with the best possible ingredients,
showcasing that one flavour. When you’re not adding a lot it means
the actual ice cream has to be amazing. People will often
come in and try the vanilla, as that’s the quality test!

CP: There are so many ice cream companies; did you feel it was
a risk when you first began Van Leeuwen?

B: Ice cream can be a hard market in New York
because winters are bad, but I think generally ice cream is a good
business because it’s something that everyone likes and always
will. There’s nothing niche about it. It’s not like we’re trying to
sell savoury doughnut sandwiches or something.

L: We started very bare bones, too. We started
the company with about $80,000 and investments from friends, and
then we just put everything into it. Like Ben says, there’s always
a risk, but we felt like it was a market we could stand out in.

CP: Ben, what’s it like working with your brother?

L: It depends what day you ask him!

B: It’s great…! It’s wonderful for the same
reasons that it can be terrible. You have no filter with family, so
things can be said that aren’t necessarily always good. But then in
the same vein you have this honesty and trust that is unshakeable.
When we’re in L.A., Pete and I take walks in the park and come up
with ideas when we’re doing things together. I feel like if we
weren’t family we wouldn’t spend time together in that way, so
being brothers can be good for business!

L: Ben and Pete and I are not technically
family, but we really feel like we are. We just always know that
everyone is on the same page. It’s amazing, really!

CP: What do you love most about what you’re doing?

L: To be working with a product that you’re
proud of is a real privilege. I used to work in events management,
which was kind of a thankless industry. We’re so proud of what
we’re doing, creating this company culture. Working for ourselves
is definitely harder than working for someone else, and we never
fully switch off. The phone can ring at any hour. But it’s ours,
and I’m so grateful for that.

B: The best part for me is summer time, when
it’s really busy and people are just so happy! There’s something so
nostalgic about ice cream, you can feel how much joy it brings
people. I don’t think it gets much better than that.

Photos by Issy Croker, Words by Meg Abbott

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