Featured Dessert: Five Leaves’ Ice Cream Cart

Maryse Chevrière — June 22, 2010

Clockwise from top: The new ice cream cart outside Five Leaves in Greenpoint, a single scoop cone of Bitter Chocolate Mint, a cup of Salted Caramel Pretzel.

There are few occasions when Five Leaves doesn’t fit the bill for all your Greenpoint dining needs. There’s a menu for those who appreciate both good sardines, and a burger topped with beets and a fried egg. Outdoor tables serve as spots for a romantic meal. And the bar is a great place to meet up with friends for a round of Southern Belles. With the launch of an ice cream cart, it’s now where you go when it’s 90 degrees out and Mister Softee won’t do.

The retro, airstream-shaped cart debuted outside the restaurant on June 13th, where it will serve homemade ice cream on Sundays through June from 12:00pm to 11:00pm, and every day in July and August. Selecting from the four flavors presents a difficult choice: Salted Caramel Pretzel, Honey Vanilla, Coffee Amaretti, and Bitter Chocolate Mint. They’re the creations of Nick Morgenstern of the General Greene, which also has a cart. Five Leaves stocks their ice cream year-round.

Bitter Chocolate Mint is the hip, sophisticated cousin of that familiar, bright Green Mint Chocolate Chip flavor you’re used to. The chocolate is dark, rich, and not too sweet. It’s plain appearance belies an in-your-face mint flavor— it’s like chewing on a mint leaf. For those experiencing withdrawal from Shake Shack’s Salted Caramel custard, this rendition actually improves on it. The base is super salty and faintly sweet. Pieces of crushed pretzel are folded in to order so they retain their crunch. The only thing that would make it even better? Chocolate-covered pretzels.

Featured Cocktail: Five Leaves’ New Cocktails

Arthur Bovino — April 22, 2010

Clockwise from top, the Tijuana Brass, a new drink on the cocktail menu at Five Leaves in Greenpoint. Bartender Dan Sabo pours another new drink: Bee’s Knees.

“It all started with the Southern Belle,” said Dan Sabo, a bartender at Five Leaves, of the popularity of their cocktail menu. And don’t most of us wish we could say the same thing? “We got this sweet tea vodka, and it sat, and it sat,” said Dan. “We didn’t know what to do with it. It was one of those things, a purveyor was like, ‘Buy a bottle of this, we’ll give you something else, free. I gotta move this.’”

They tinkered, mixing the tea vodka with lemon juice, simple syrup, mint, and sparkling white wine, as a special for a few days. “My first night off, I got three calls from staff asking, ‘How do you make this?’” Dan noted. “People had come by asking for it by name.”

They called it the Porch Swing at first, then switched it, but it didn’t matter what they called it— it sold. “A table of five guys will come in here, and four of them will order Southern Belles, and no one has a single problem with it. It’s so awesome. And they’ll get wasted on them too. These inked-up, tatted-out guys in tight jeans and flannels, and they’re just like [Dan switched to a low voice], ‘Yeah, I’ll have the Southern Belle.’ I’m like, that’s cool.”

With spring, Five Leaves has revamped their cocktail menu. Joining the Southern Belle (left) are four new drinks: Tijuana Brass, Bee’s Knees, Pimm’s Cup, and the Farmer’s Daughter.

Photographs of New Cocktails at Five Leaves >>

First Look: Paulie Gee’s

Arthur Bovino — March 22, 2010

Clockwise from top: The E & O Pizza with Fior di Latte, Marinated Kale, and Guanciale; chef Paul Giannone; Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Brooklyn’s newest pizza drama is playing out in Greenpoint, just blocks from Metropolitan, in a space that was previously a restaurant of a former Top Chef contestant. The new chef is someone with considerably less airtime, a guy from Jersey named Paul Giannone— Paulie Gee.

Until weeks ago, Paulie’s pizza-making was mostly confined to the oven he built in his yard. Now pizza-lovers and aficionados are gathering to see if this former software quality assurance engineer can pull off dreams of joining the City’s elite pizzaiolos. It’s the kind of New York— er— Brooklyn story you can literally sink your teeth into. To learn more about his story, check out this interview.

Recently, we joined Slice’s managing editor, Adam Kuban, at Paulie Gee’s to sample some of this Brooklyn-born dreamer’s early efforts.

More About Paulie Gee's >>

Hungry Chefs: Paulie Gee

Arthur Bovino — March 22, 2010

Hungry Chefs is Always Hungry’s series of featured interviews that bring you into the kitchen with interesting and noteworthy members of the culinary community. This edition is with Paul Giannone.

Paulie Gee hard at work at his eponymous pizzeria in Greenpoint.

You do your best every day to realize your dreams. But how many people get to see their dreams come true? And if and when they come true, how does what was dreamed measure up to reality? There’s man in Brooklyn making pizza who may be best suited to answer these questions, Paul Giannone. Or as New Yorkers are starting to know him, Paulie Gee.

As recently as February 2009, Paulie was profiled talking about a pizzeria as a ways off. Last week he broke from making Neapolitan pies to discuss Paulie Gee’s, his pizzeria in Greenpoint.

AHNY: Paulie, you’re living a dream here, aren’t you? How did this come to be?
Paulie: I always loved to cook, I’d invite people over my house just so I could cook for them. You know, for the past 25 years, people have been encouraging me to open a restaurant. What I did for a living wasn’t what I really enjoyed. But opening a real restaurant always seemed daunting.

More with Paulie Gee >>

AlwaysInformed: The Mister Softee Jingle

Arthur Bovino — March 18, 2010

Mister Softee is back.

It happened last night, 2010’s first Mister Softee jingle. It makes sense if you consider Mister Softee’s history. In 1956, the Conway brothers took their first truck out on St. Paddy’s Day, and gave out green-colored ice cream. March 17th was the anniversary of Mister Softee’s first outing.

The jingle signifies that warm weather is near, but it’s also the crack of the starter’s pistol—the beginning of a run of articles, and local TV news spots that detail how the jingle drives city-dwellers crazy. People have been hiding from the cold so long they forget they can actually leave their homes. They take three months of cabin fever out on poor Mister Softee, and his happy little song.

Last year’s dire warnings included a report at the end of March in The Daily News about Inwood residents claiming to be driven mad by the constant jingle. The New York Post chimed in two months later, this time in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, with residents complaining about the trucks that circle McCarren Park. NPR in 2007 when New York City implemented a new noise code. You get the idea. The over/under on the 2010’s first news report about people being driven mad with rage about the jingle? By next Friday, Monday the 29th at the latest.

Two things. It’s beautiful outside, get out of the house. Go buy an a ice cream. Also, did you know the jingle has lyrics? The cream-i-est dream-i-e-est Softee words were copyrighted in 1960:

The Mister Softee Lyrics >>

Featured Restaurant: Five Leaves

Arthur Bovino — March 15, 2010

Grilled Sardines with Caramelized Cauliflower, Eggplant, Pine nuts, and Curried Date Dressing, and Affogato with an Intelligentsia Organic Espresso Shot at Five Leaves in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

There was a time not long ago, when those walking from the Bedford L toward McGuinness had already filled their bellies, or well knew the contents of their fridge. It was a hike past the Turkey’s Nest, the concrete baseball field, and the benches near the Automotive High School, to their vinyl-sided homes. Unless they planned to eat Polish, Thai, or at Wasabi, passing N 12th without having eaten was a no-no. But change comes fast in Williamsburg, and this energy has spread to Greenpoint. So it is that Five Leaves, a neighborhood joint, provides this hipster trail of tears a place to feast on the way.

More About Five Leaves >>