I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for…Ice Cream and Cereal
By Noelle Hilario and Adema Turarbekova
The temperature hit the 90s on the first day of July and sticky customers rushed into the shop for air conditioned relief. Faces flushed and clothes soaked with sweat, they breath easily in the cheery parlor decorated with anime and cartoon characters on small television screens. Like customers all over the sweltering city, they wanted cold, soft, and delicious ice cream. But they also wanted something else: Fruit Loops, Fruity Pebbles, Apple Jacks and Captain Crunch to help satisfy their sweet tooth.
Ice cream and cereal are the latest cool trend in New York City’s Lower East Side, and it’s not just about the temperature.
The Milk and Cream Cereal Bar, which opened in the heart of Chinatown last May, combines breakfast and dessert for a twist on traditional soft serve. This ice cream bar allows people to infuse cereal into their ordinary soft serve vanilla or cookie dough ice cream. With 18 different choices of cereal, ranging from Cookie Crisp, to Special K, customers can choose the perfect combination to satisfy their cravings.The fun does not stop there, they can further customize by choosing between a one size cup or four different waffle cones: original, red velvet, strawberry, and green tea, and incorporate more traditional toppings such as fruits, nuts, cookies, candies, and drizzles can be added.
“I think it’s a great concept. I like ice cream and I like cereals and I think it is cool you can mix and match your own type of cereal and the type of ice cream you like,” says Jerona, 23, who didn’t want to give her last name, licking her vanilla ice cream with Cocoa Puffs from a red velvet waffle cone. Jerona, a local university student, had traveled all the way from the Bronx to the Lower East Side with her friend Claire to try out the place.
“I even would do this at home” said Claire, 21, also reluctant to give her full name, as she devours the last spoon of ice cream in her cup.
The ice cream and cereal bar concept is fairly new in the industry, with only three stores in the city. The first ice cream and cereal bar, KITH Treats, was introduced in 2015 is located in Brooklyn, where Milk and Cream Cereal Bar followed two years later with two brand locations.
This particular shop is a brain child of Cory Ng, 30, a son of Chinese immigrants from the neighborhood. He used to run a bike shop that went out of business. So he began to think about what else to do. “There is no safety net. So you gotta dig deep and sort of figure out what you want to do.”
What he wanted to do was mix breakfast food with ice cream, “timeless food that people enjoy.”
He also wagered that Chinatown was a busy district filled with lots of Chinese restaurants, but few dessert places, and that this novelty eatery would appeal to the hipsters moving into the neighborhood. “We figured if we opened something like this it would be complementary to the other businesses,” he explains. “It doesn’t have to have the Chinese style business or Asian oriented. We are moving forward with time.”
Although Ng would not share sales numbers, he did reveal that the most popular combination. “The mix of vanilla ice cream and Fruity Pebbles is an award-winning mix for customers.”
For many customers, the appeal is not just the food but nostalgia for a more innocent time. “I think people like the familiarity and they remember their childhood more than anything when they are having their ice cream with cereal, so there is less guilt,” Khalida Brohi, 29,
says while licking chocolate sauce from her lips. “There is just something about the place that brings people back to a time of peace, where everything was simpler — childhood.”
That’s exactly what Ng wanted his adult customers to have — what he calls “the full experience” of reliving childhood as soon as they enter the shop. His careful choice of cartoon-themed decorations was meant to evoke a youthful ambiance. “We wanna draw that nostalgic feeling for people, and we wanted to bring that piece of home to people,” he said as he drizzled chocolate on someone’s childhood fantasy.
