Ice Cream for the Ages
Xie Xie's thousand-year-old ice cream sandwich
Somewhere deep in Hell's Kitchen, an ancient ice cream sandwich is sleeping--or so chef Angelo Sosa would have us believe.
By opening his pan-Asian sandwich shop, Xie Xie (pronounced SHAY-SHAY), in the middle of the city's onslaught of banh mi and num pang, Sosa wielded a little reinvention to catch the crowds. And his "1000 year old" ice cream sandwich is one treat we can't pass up whenever we're in the neighborhood.
Sosa drew inspiration from the curious Chinese delicacy known as the "century egg," a preserved duck egg that has been stowed away in lime, salt and ash for several months, rendering the innards hard-boiled, blackened and unmistakably sulfurous.
Now, he's re-created the fermented phenomenon in much sweeter terms. Packed between thin cocoa-nib cookies, a layer of caramel ice cream holds the primeval secret to winning our hearts and bellies--black salted caramel--which oozes from its chilly internment.
We recommend slicing the hefty hand pie ($4) in half and dipping every available surface in the gush of burnt caramel that emerges.
Xie Xie, 645A Ninth Ave. (at 45th St.); 212-265-2975 or xiexieproject.com
