New Kids on the Block

TEXT AND PHOTOS By Arthur Schwartz

This month we focus on the cold stuff, gelato and soft serve, perfect for our upcoming abnormally warm winter. Amazingly, when we visited both new places, on very cold nights, the lines were long.

Pinkberry Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village, all of a sudden, is awash with gelato and soft serve frozen yogurt purveyors. After the Pandemic there was one, Amorino Gelato, on University and 11th Street (probably still the best). Joining the crew is Pinkberry, which has returned to the corner of 6th Avenue and 13th Street.
Pinkberry serves a rotating selection of 40 frozen yogurt flavors, including pomegranate, orange peach mango, pineapple orange banana, strawberry lemonade, ruby chocolate, salted butter caramel, and coconut milk lemon cream. (By rotating, we mean that flavors change periodically.) You can get various sizes of cups, cones or smoothies, with a wide variety of toppings. The store is open until 11 pm. The prices are fairly reasonable. You can get a better value if you order take home for about $14.00 a pint. All production is done on site. Gluten-free flavors are available.

Anita – La Mamma Del Gelato

We had to walk “a little” to get here, all the way to 26th Street and Broadway. It’s a needed walk to burn off the calories you can pick up at probably the most spectacular gelato store in NYC. It’s an Israeli chain, which opened three stores in the city this fall.
Expect 150 rotating flavors of gelato, frozen yogurt, sorbet and ice cream to be prominently featured behind the glass display. Every day, visitors will get to choose from 36 different types of frozen treats, each one handmade in-store, just as they do at the other locations of the family-owned gelateria around the globe, including ones in Miami, Barcelona, Sydney, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv and Puerto Rico.
Standout flavor options include the macadamia cream, the milk chocolate salted pretzel, the hazelnut mousse with chocolate, the crumble cheesecake with mixed berries and the chocolate almonds with caramel, among others. You can get, cones, cups and smoothies. Don’t expect to spend less than $8.00 for the smallest serving, but what they serve is not matched anywhere else on the gelato scene.
Lest you think Anita to be a randomly chosen name, think again. The shop’s moniker is an ode to Anita Avital, the woman who started the chain now run by her son and daughter. The chain did, in fact, originate in Anita’s kitchen in Netanya, Israel, back in 1998.
A single mother of four, Anita started making traditional Italian gelato at home with her son, Nir, in the late ‘90s using a small ice cream machine. After gaining popularity among their neighbors and sold from a cart on weekends, the duo decided to open their very first shop in Tel Aviv in 2002.
Two decades later, there are a total of 19 Anita branches all around the world, including this latest three in NYC. Well worth the (needed) walk to the Madison Square area.