Ice cream – sometimes a delicacy and often a necessity for any sweet tooth – has reached and drawn from almost every corner of the world, and its delectable charm has not escaped those of us in the newsroom. Each week, the staffers of the Daily Bruin will head to different corners and cultural pockets of Los Angeles to bring you a taste of the variety of ice cream the city has to offer.
Nestled in a strip mall on North La Brea Avenue, we came across Persian ice cream shop Mashti Malone’s Ice Cream, a diamond in the rough.
As we passed underneath the peeling, dimly lit sign, adorned with seemingly out-of-place three-leaf clovers, the fluorescent yellow of saffron rosewater ice cream – the establishment’s signature flavor – immediately drew us in.
Offering over 40 flavors of signature homemade Persian ice cream, as well as an assortment of Persian desserts, Mashti Malone’s is aesthetically simple yet indulgent, as ice cream should be.
(Christopher Hoo/Daily Bruin senior staff)
We started with the speciality: the “Creamy Rosewater Malone.” A scoop of subtle rosewater ice cream sat atop a zulbia, a decadent fried wheat flour disk soaked in sugar syrup that is a stand-alone dessert in many South Asian and Middle Eastern cuisines.
The saffron rosewater flavor and the sugary zulbia were in perfect harmony; each bite was piercing and nectary sweet. After a few, however, the sweetness of the dessert was overpowering to those of us new to rose-flavored ice cream and would have been better complemented by a less flavorful side dish.
Although initially featuring only two flavors, the creamy rosewater and saffron rosewater, Mashti Malone’s has now grown to offer multitudes more, such as Turkish coffee, lavender and more common staples such as cookies and cream and bubble gum.
The family-owned business started over 34 years ago, when the owners bought out an old, abandoned ice cream shop called Mugsy Malone and replaced as much of the name as their budget allowed at the time. Today, the popular eatery boasts an impressive wholesale business on top of the shop, with ice cream made almost exclusively with natural and non-artificial products.
Although not radically removed from the traditional family ice-cream shop, Mashti Malone’s is a welcome escape from everyday flavors to a bolder ice cream excursion offering a variety of dishes.
And to our palates, these treats were much like our first time visiting Mashti Malone’s: new, flavorful and unexpected.
What are your ice cream favorites around Los Angeles? Email Patankar and Mannis at apatankar@media.ucla.edu and smannis@media.ucla.edu.