smitten

With our love of ice cream, when we heard about a pop up ice cream store in SF's own hayes valley, we just had to go. this wonderful store was called smitten. This creative little store made ice cream right in front of you! We had heard the stories--the instantaneous ice cream making, the liquid nitrogen, oh my!
And so we went one day on a whim. And as we drove up, the line down the square got our hopes up even more. We jumped out of the car, got in line, and waited. And waited. And waited. The liquid nitrogen freeze technique was great and was the whole point of this store BUT, took a really long time. This was unfortunate but we decided we would spend the time waiting wisely and choose our flavor. Unfortunatley, out of the three flavors offered that day, only two were left. 

strawberry goodness

We really wanted to try salted caramel but so did everyone before us and so by the time we got to the front, we had strawberry and vanilla left. We ordered one of each from a hipster holding an iPad who wrote the order on a colored post-it and gave us a poker chip. This clever method of order/pick up worked pretty well except that because we had ordered two flavors, we got them at two different times. 

kickin it old school--VANILLA

When we finally got them we had watched the twenty somethings who made the ice cream pour the giant bottles of unfrozen ice cream into tiny liquid nitrogen mixers to freeze countless times. Wait a minute... Liquid nitrogen, you say? WHAT? Yes. This liquid nitrogen is what makes Smitten really special. They freeze each ice cream order individually. They pour their magic ice cream mix into the mixer, get some gaseous liquid nitrogen and use their chemistry genius to freeze up some iced desserts.


We got the ice cream--eventually--and it was good. Small but delicious. And extra good because we saw it get frozen just for us.