I have seen photos of how the citizens of Cincinnati eat their chili. I have seen it on the Anthony Bourdain show and I have had friends described it to me when they went to Cincinnati for a long weekend but it wasn’t until last Monday that I finally came face-to-face with it.

Every last Monday of each month, Edward’s in Tribeca does a Cincinnati Night where you’ll get to eat some of the popular Cincinnati food items. Of course the one thing everybody goes for is chili from Skyline Chili. Chili from Cincinnati isn’t as thick as regular chili and they add cocoa powder into it to give it a bit of sweetness. Besides Skyline you can also get ribs from Montgomery Inn, pizza from Larosa and ice cream from Graeter’s.

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Well sorta back. They’re back in answer form. Last time I saw these guys was at their season end party. If you’re following them on Twitter, I’m sure you know what they have been up to. But I was curious as to what they thought about their first time on the road and maybe get some spoilers for 2010! Argh I can’t wait till Spring comes. Thanks Doug and Bryan for answering my questions!

So now that the season is over, what did you think of the whole experience? Was it everything you wished for?
We had no expectations. We hoped to get through the summer and maybe have a few laughs or stories along the way.

Did you ever think this would become so popular? So popular that you ended up at the Vendy Awards.
Not in the least! Full disclosure – we’d never heard of the Vendy Awards until July!
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Few weeks ago, The Big Gay Ice Cream truck had their big season end party over at the East Village. They were accompanied by NYC Cravings and Cupcake Stop. After work I went down to check all the trucks out. As I was walking over to Destination Bar, where the ice cream truck had parked in front of, I had this incredible idea. What if I combined a cupcake from Cupcake Stop with ice cream from the Big Gay Ice Cream? And top it off with something savory from Cravings?!

I had my heart set on getting the salty pimp from Doug and Bryan but then I realized that they had to turn the ice cream upside down and dip it into the chocolate. Didn’t think it would’ve been possible to do that if the ice cream was inside a cup. So……I ended up getting a triple chocolate cupcake and got the gobbler sundae over it! Bryan was super nice about it. The line for Cravings was super long so I didn’t bother lining up but they were serving onion pancake, they could’ve worked with the gobbler triple chocolate.

What can I say? It was crazily good.

You can check out some more photos of that night here!

- The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck on Twitter
- Cupcake Stop on Twitter
- NYC Cravings on Twitter

Coolhaus, conveniently parked right behind the Gastrobus at The Brig, sold ice cream sandwiches. Not just any ice cream sandwiches but architecturally themed ice cream sandwiches. There are a lot of write ups about Coolhaus and you can find one here and one here if you’re interested in their background. Like designing a building, an ice cream sandwich has to be sturdy yet flexible. It needs to hold up when bitten into. I’m actually not a big fan of ice cream sandwiches maybe. I pretty much were bored out by the generic rectangular shaped ones that I think we all grew up with. They were, well, uninteresting. Also I hate to get melted ice cream everywhere. Sticky fingers are annoying. But for my quest I had abandon everything I dislike about ice cream sandwiches and order one from Coolhaus.
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Funny how I was typing my post on Momofuku Milk Bar where I had their banana cake. And I said on there that I love the flavor of bananas. So of course I was happy to see that Doug, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, had banana-cocoa puree as a topping today! I just took a red eye flight last night from LA and didn’t get much sleep but damit I’m gonna get me some ice cream after work! I walked from 32nd to 17th. While I was walking down I came up with my 2nd option in case he ran out of banana-cocoa puree. Then I remember seeing wafers as another topping and thought it would be mighty tasty to add that on top of the banana-cocoa puree. When I got there I asked him if he still has the puree and he said YES. SWEET! And yes I got the wafers also. I took a BIG first bite and it was everything I hoped it would be. Really strong banana flavors, love it! Plus the wafers it felt like I was eating a deconstructed banana cocoa cream pie. I once ate a whole banana cream pie by myself.
It was also nice to chat a bit with Doug about the Vendys and Men Pocky sticks and Japan. Not sure what I’ll do once he retires for the winter season. *sigh

After trying out the Bistro Truck for lunch, I told Steph that the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, which we tried before, was in Union Square also. She was excited to hear that so we went on a hunt for it. Twitter was down the whole day so I wasn’t able to check where the truck was parked at. We circled around Union Square but nothing. We were about to give up but Steph said she had a little bit more lunch time left so we decided to walk down 17th St. Funny how things work out because there was the truck parked at the corner on 17th St and Broadway. Yay! We looked at the menu. I was eyeing the toasted curry coconut but Steph suggested the salted caramel. Then I asked her, have you had salted caramel on ice cream before and she said yes. Hehee so I said we should try something new like the toasted curry coconut and thats what we got. Doug basically packs all his ice cream with tons of toppings, TONS! After getting our vanilla ice cream in a cup with toasted curry coconuts we walked to the side to eat it. First impression, Thai food. Second impression, hhmmmmmmmmmm yummie. You wouldn’t think curry powder and ice cream would go together but it did. Steph had one suggestion and that maybe it would’ve been better if the coconut was shredded. I disagree. I think if the coconut was shredded the curry flavor might get lost but with big pieces of coconut you get big curry flavors. Right?

- The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck on Twitter