WHAT: Magnum CUSTOMIZABLE ice cream bars!
⚪️ Base: Vanilla
⚫️ Coated with: Dark Chocolate syrup
⚫️ Toppings:Rose petals, white chocolate crispearls, edible gold flakes
⚫️ Drizzled with: white chocolate syrup
WHERE: Magnum in SoHo
Creativity: 😉😉😉😉😉
Presentation: 😎😎😎😎😎
Taste: 😋😋😋
Texture: 😜😜😜
Value: 😄😄
Overall Experience: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
STORY: Happy weekend everyone! This week has been pretty crazy in terms of work, and I reeeeeaally wanted to celebrate with ice cream. I suggested this to IR, my usual ice cream partner in crime - initially we wanted to try another shop's famed & very photogenic dessert (giant ice cream cubes!! Think Klondike but cube). Sadly after checking its website and Yelp, this shop is no more. Sad face.
IR suggested Magnum as another delicious (& photogenic!) alternative - I had heard about it before, seen it on Facebook as an event, but thought it was only a one time event. Turns out the actual store in SoHo is only seasonal, and will be here for a limited time.
Walking inside, it's a beautiful & spacious space! Whoever did the interiors did pretty well. We arrived around 6 pm, not much of a line with 5 people ahead of us. While we waited to pay, we were in awe of the space. Set up like a gallery, there are display cases and booths meant for you to Instagram with your ice cream!
This is a quick breakdown of your visit to Magnum in 10 steps -
- Get in line to pay
- Cashier asks you vanilla or chocolate
- Pay
- Choose 3 toppings
- Choose ice cream coating, dark chocolate | chocolate | white chocolate
- Server spectacularizes ice cream bar with chosen toppings
- Choose drizzle dark chocolate | chocolate | white chocolate
- Ta-da!! You want to eat it, but first, Instagram. Lol.
- Give your ice cream the paparazzi treatment - visit all booths
- Finally eat your ice cream. Done!
Cashier took my order, first asking me if I wanted vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Vanilla!
I paid $7, if you're wondering... expensive for an ice cream bar. Which is why I valued this ice cream at only 2 smilies. Immediately after you pay, you move to the right and are greeted by a server, AND a serious plethora of toppings that you can choose three of. Fancier than the ones you'd get at a frozen yogurt place. I chose the exotic-looking rose petals, edible gold flakes, and white chocolate crispearls (weird term, but okay. we get it.). My server scooped the three toppings into a shaker (similar to those cocktail shakers in the bar, but smaller), mixed them and waved me over to follow her from the toppings area to the creation area.
She asked me which coating I wanted out of the three available, dark chocolate, chocolate, white chocolate. Choosing dark chocolate, she proceeded to open up a predip the pristine vanilla ice cream bar into its respective tub. With a fancy arm swoop, the ice cream was coated! Next she sprinkled on both sides the toppings. Finally, I requested white chocolate drizzle to finish. Watching the whole process, it's pretty cool that this ice cream bar is your own creation.
Sooooooo cool.
THOUGHTS: After taking many photos, IR and I went to the 'bar' area, and finally chowed down. Thank goodness for the ice cream coating, because on first bite I noticed inside my vanilla ice cream had already started to melt. Tasted SO good, however it was a little runny... I guess I spent too much time taking photos 😅. Taking more bites, I learned that the rose petals do not taste how they look. The rose petals are in fact tasteless, and texture-wise got in the way of me enjoying my ice cream properly - it felt like I was eating wads of paper that would stick to my teeth a few times. The gold flakes were there for show and also did not have taste. The white chocolate crispearls added a small crunch - would prefer more crunchiness.
With regards to flavor, the vanilla ice cream and dark chocolate coating were the best parts. The vanilla was pretty decent and I liked its creaminess. The dark chocolate coating was rich and thick, pairing very well with the vanilla.
Would I go back?Possibly! I love how it's customizable. However for its price of $7 per ice cream bar... I'll come back again in a while, definitely before it closes. According to Magnum's website, there are over 200,000 possibilities you can create with the options they have. Since I'm also interested in the other toppings that would add a flavor punch to the ice cream, I'd like to bump my Magnum # up from 1/200,000 to 1/100,000 😝
Something I just thought about, while Magnum has the #MagnumNYC hashtag going to spread the word through social media, Magnum could take customizable ice cream to another level if they turned this into a contest for the best designed ice cream, best topping combo, etc. It would also be cool if we were the ones actually creating the ice cream (kind of like CoolMess), dipping the ice cream and doing all that jazz with the toppings. Just food for thought!
