Flavor Boulevard

Both times that we wandered about this perpetually sunbathed town, we found ourselves drifting to the corner of Marcy and Washington for some perpetually melting sweets. Without Ecco Espresso & Gelato, I don’t know if I could have made it to O’Keefe museum the first day. Ice cream is my life source.

They have 20 flavors each time we’re there, rotating the rarer avocado, boysenberry and guava while keeping the common but ever-endearing chocolate and lime. As they claim, “what’s in [their] gelato case changes too quickly for [them] to post” on the website; I fantasize that Ecco’s gelataios just wake up and churn whatever ingredients they dream of the night before. There were always a few magenta red raspberry things in the case, and at least among the three of us, raspberry appears to be one of the most popular flavors to pair: with sake, with lime, with cherry, and with chocolate.

I can eat chilled mashed avocado (with or without sugar) as a hefty dessert for 70 years straight, but like taro ice cream, avocado gelato may sound weird to the American palates that are used to spreading the green mush in tacos and quesadillas. Either way, avocado gelato is “surprisingly good”, as Jen put it. It also marries well both the prickly sweetness of pineapple sorbet and the dense sweetness of mango gelato.

At the end of the day, bad combinations of ice cream are as common as the pictured patron’s hairdo and as comprehensible as the bowl in front of his companion (as far as I can see, there’s no soup on Ecco’s chalked-up specials of the day). So I would hardly doubt any flavor that Ecco scoops out. 🙂

Money matters: small cup: $4.25 (tax included)

Address: Ecco Espresso & Gelato
105 East Marcy Street
Santa Fe, NM 87501
(505) 986-9778
www.eccogelato.com