If you haven’t eaten Jamaican ice cream, you haven’t fully lived. Jamaicans were creating innovative flavors before most other ice cream makers had graduated from chocolate and vanilla. Remember when everyone went gaga over Momofuku’s Cereal Milk ice cream several years ago? Well, the Jamaicans got there first, churning out Grape-Nut ice cream—yup, you read that right—way before it became the hot topic of the food world. And remember when it was trendy to make grown-up ice cream floats with stout beer in place of soda? Jamaican ice cream stores already had that beer-flavored concept covered, too, with their pleasingly bitter “Guinness” option in the freezer case.
Those flavors are all must-tries when you visit this ice cream shop on a corner in Flatbush, but my favorite has to be soursop, based on the floral, tangy tropical fruit that’s called guanábana in much of Latin America—mixed into a custard with cream and churned until frozen, it may be one of the greatest ice cream flavors on earth. (Honorable mention goes to Irish/sea moss flavor; more on that below.)
