Editor’s Note: Remember when VendrTV made eggnog ice cream with Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream? (Watch the holiday episode here.) Well, we’re visiting the Van Leeuwen’s new Brooklyn ice cream shop in time to sweeten the weekend for Mother’s Day! In our new Cart to Counter section, we feature businesses that cross the line from wheels to walls. Thanks to new contributor Karen Yung for showing us around Van Leeuwen’s new digs! Have a Cart to Counter business you want to tell us about? Email me at amy@vendr.tv. Have a great weekend, everyone! Don’t forget yo mama on Sunday.

At first, passersby who happen upon the Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream Shop might suppose they’ve stumbled on a neighborhood standby. Located on a bustling stretch of Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Van Leeuwen‘s charming shop exudes a neighborhood familiarity. Even its name has an old-fashioned twang as if to hark back to high school biology class and the “Father of Microbiology” himself, Mr. Anton Van Leeuwenhoek. (There is no relation here. I checked.) But, in some ways, their appearance is deceptive because the Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream Shop is actually the “new kid on the block”!

The shop opened in February and is the latest chapter in a venture that started out (and remains) a mobile food operation. Van Leeuwen was a pioneer of the artisan food truck wave when they debuted in spring 2008 and most New Yorkers have likely seen one of the five creamy yellow trucks that roam the city year-round. According to brothers/owners Ben and Peter Van Leeuwen, and Ben’s wife (and co-owner), Laura O’Neill, making the move from cart to counter was a “natural and exciting” next step. It gave them a home base and the chance to finally be able to invite their customers “in”. They’re the second food truck to make the leap to brick-and-mortar in New York City (Dessert Truck was the first) and, like the DTWorks team, the Van Leeuwens are prime examples of how hard work can pay off.

Constructed from 90% salvaged materials, the shop embodies the sustainable ethos that is central to their product. Drawing inspiration from “warm spring days” and “whimsical childhood memories,” the shop is a true reflection of the Van Leeuwen brand. The interior is simple and clean with white painted-over exposed brick walls, pressed tin ceiling, and a gorgeous dark stained-wood arch around a small counter. A cute logo; DIY shelves and lighting fixtures; and a hand-drawn mural from Laura’s friend, Joanna Zawadzka, update the vintage-y feel with a modern Brooklyn sensibility.

But perhaps the quirkiest piece in the store – and in their trucks – is the ice cream menu itself! It’s a gilt-framed piece of art with detailed descriptions of every flavor adorned with illustrations to highlight the key ingredients of each. The Vanilla includes “organic beans from Papua New Guinea“; the Cinnamon is labeled as a fine wine might be: “Biodynamic Single Estate Ceylon Cinnamon from Sri Lanka”; the Chocolate and Gianduja showcase product from celebrated French chocolatier, Michael Cluizel.

Of course, this obsessive attention to detail in sourcing extends to the ingredients that make up the ice cream. Van Leeuwen sources dairy from only Hudson Valley farmers who they know personally and who use absolutely no stabilizers, preservatives, or unnatural emulsifiers.

I’ve enjoyed many a Van Leeuwen cone in the last two years. My favorites, pistachio and Earl Grey, are intensely creamy and emerge from their freezer home perfectly firm for leisurely indulgence on a hot summer day. Those with less of a sweet tooth can rejoice: Van Leeuwen’s ice cream is mildly sweet and never cloyingly so.

So why venture out to Brooklyn to experience the ice cream shop when you can simply Twitter-stalk the trucks that seem almost ubiquitous around the city?

Well, according to Laura, the shop offers everything “to stay”, which means they can serve their top-notch Intelligentsia coffee from real ceramic coffee cups, offer their homemade pastries on china plates, and serve sundaes in proper sundae glasses. In other words, you can now enjoy their ice cream (or coffee, or hazelnut brown butter cake, or cheddar chive scone) and imagine – for a dreamy second – that you are lingering over the paper in a Paris café or that you are 12-years-old again and enjoying your favorite ice cream at your favorite neighborhood ice cream parlor. Now that’s a feeling you just can’t get on the streets of New York, is it?

Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream Shop
632 Manhattan Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Photos by Amy Cao

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