Misipasta's $25 Gelato Pints, Reviewed
Also: How to have a perfect meal at this Williamsburg boutique, which serves one of NYC's great new sandwiches
Enjoy this column on some of NYC’s priciest gelato, which costs $15 to $25 per pint. Paid subscribers can scroll down for a review of Misipasta.
The other night I did something I enjoyed very much. I poured a rum and coke (why not), and rewatched Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” with my dad.
I’m happy to report that the milkshake scene still hits hard.
You know the bit. Vincent Vega, a well-heeled hitman played by a very cool John Travolta, is stupefied when his date orders a creamy blend of milk and ice cream for $5.
“That’s five dollars?…You don’t put bourbon in it or nothin’?”
No bourbon.
Never mind that Vega drives around in a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu in perfect condition. Never mind that he pays $1,500 cash for a few grams of his favorite recreational substance.
This gangster, who carries a stack of $100 bills so high it would “choke a horse,” as the screenplay notes, somehow gets frazzled by dairy price inflation in the greater Los Angeles area.
And yet, we sympathize — though not just because of the cost itself, roughly $11 in today’s dollars. We sympathize because no matter how rich (or unemployed) we all are, it always hits a nerve when a nostalgic, childlike indulgence shoots up in price.
Ice cream doesn’t carry the “it’s desirable to be expensive” cachet of designer handbags or rarefied sushi. Expensive ice cream almost always stings.
So let’s talk about the expensive takeaway gelato at Misipasta by Missy Robbins.
I’ve been dropping by this tiny Williamsburg restaurant — a sequel of sorts to the larger Misi a few blocks away — for buttery cappelleti, savory anchovy toasts, and creamy affogato.
I like it here. The prices are reasonable too. For the most part.
But the sleek room also doubles as a posh boutique. It’s a place for preserved anchovies that cost as much as gourmet burgers and jars of tuna that will set you back more than a high-end pizza paired with a hazy IPA. Opulent truffle shavers (if you can afford opulent truffles) lie on neat shelves, and pints of mint chip gelato come packed in modern, monochromatic containers.
How much does the gelato cost? That’s a fun trivia question.
A pint of Van Leeuwen mint, a fancy South Brooklyn ice cream, runs seven or eight bucks.
A pint of Misi mint, a fancy North Brooklyn ice cream, is more than double, at $17.
It was the most expensive pint of gelato I’d ever encountered in my life. Until I saw the other prices here.
Misipasta charges $18 for amaretti cookie gelato, $22 for hazelnut, $15 for fior di latte (a steal!), and $25 for pistachio. Then add on a buck for the restaurant’s online ordering fee.
That’s $26 for a pint of gelato.
Prices in New York rarely phase me in our inflationary era, but I believe my initial reaction to the pistachio gelato was “holy sh!t.”
“The gelato is priced the same way we price everything else,” owner Sean Feeney told me via email. “It’s based off of the cost of ingredients and labor as well as supply [and] demand. We don’t make a lot of it and sell all the pints we make,” he added.
I guess they don’t put bourbon in it.
Now to be fair, every business has its own set of costs to reckon with. Misipasta doesn’t benefit from the same economies of scale as a national retail brand like Van Leeuwen. Nor does it likely have the same sprawling space as an Il Laboratorio del Gelato, a well-regarded local purveyor that charges $14 for twenty ounces of pistachio.
Misipasta isn’t an ice cream manufacturer. It’s a restaurant. The same could be said about Superiority Burger, which asks $17 for some of the city’s best and most innovative pints, with flavors like lime leaf and toasted barley tea.
And let’s be honest: Folks aren’t browsing the aisles of Target to pick up a pint of Misipasta gelato. They’re not comparison shopping on DoorDash. They’re here, in one of Brooklyn’s most expensive neighborhoods, for an edible souvenir from one of their favorite chefs. Few would expect an $8 pint from Robbins.
But all would expect very good gelato from Robbins.
The mint stracci, like the version at Misi, packs a sharp, grassy aroma. There’s no lingering menthol finish, only a fresh garden perfume. The gelato itself is ultra-light; it eats like an Italian American cream ice, while shards of chocolate collapse like tiny wafers.
The pistachio gelato is not light. It is nearly as dense as peanut butter. The base flaunts a light olive hue, while Sicilian pistachios — bright green and neon pink — burrow themselves deeply into the container. There are as many nuts as black speckles in vanilla ice cream. The first bite hits you with notes that are intensely nutty and woodsy — a powerful fragrance that seems to hover around the pint — and then the soft crunch of the pistachios kicks into gear.
This is extremely good gelato.
The thing about dining out in New York these days is that literally everything is expensive. So it would be tough to single out a particular item without sounding like a hypocrite.
You can declare that you won’t pay these prices for takeout gelato — a dessert that will last you a few days — but didn’t you just drop $26 on a gin martini that you polished off in 30 minutes? Didn’t you split a $30 pastrami sandwich at Katz’s the other week? And since you saved up $1,000 for that annual omakase with your partner, maybe expensive gelato is the type of thing you can probably afford to splurge on once a month or so?
Maybe.
At a certain point, something’s got to give, though. Past a certain level of price increases, some of us actually need to start cutting back, especially as Manhattan and Brooklyn rents hit stupid new highs, yet again.
I’m old enough to remember the heady days of the prepandemic era, back when Charlotte Druckman wrote that “eight, 10, 12 dollars is an awful lot for a pint of ice cream.” The author was referring to ultra-premium varieties sporting jargon like “hand packed,” or “small batch.” She lamented that the “egalitarian treat” had become “another common good that’s been ‘elevated’ into a luxury item.”
So the story goes that milk prices are up over 30 percent since Druckman published her column in 2019, to say nothing of rising labor costs, which is why even a pint of Haagen Dazs commands $8 at CVS. Something more special from Morgenstern’s or Malai will now set you back $13.
And now we have flickers of an ultra-ultra premium tier, where pints approach or blow past twenty bucks. Are they better or more delicious than their cheaper peers?
Let’s think about that for a second. “Better” and “more delicious” aren’t my favorite terms to use in arts criticism. I like to hope that most folks who go out for a $365 tasting at Eleven Madison don’t expect it to be precisely $70 better than a $295 tasting at Ilis, just as no rational person would be believe that a $140 million Picasso sold at auction is superior to a $110 million Basquiat.
Each artwork or tasting menu has its own wildly different story to tell.
But if someone looks inside their freezer and sees a pint of Misi Pistacho right next to a great pint of pistachio from another fancy brand — two things that are not so wildly different — could you really blame them for wondering why one costs 200 percent more than the other?
Or as Vincent Vega might say, this might be pretty cussin’ good gelato, but I’m not sure it’s worth $20.
Behind the Paywall: Misipasta, Reviewed
How to ace the menu, and why the $8 affogato is so great
What dishes to avoid…
A few words on a bangin’ cotechino sandwich
The Pistachio Pepsi Challenge: Van Leeuwen vs Misipasta vs Haagen Dazs!
How to ace a meal at Misipasta
One could easily get rattled by the haute boutique energy at Misipasta, which highlights products that are often difficult to find outside of Europe.
There are anchovies for $18 and anchovies for $38. There are jars of tuna belly for $34 and jars of bluefin tuna for $54.
Calabrian chile oil gets roomier shelf space than most Apple Watches could hope for.
The vibes are very Milan-meets-Westport. Light pours into the narrow room. Chefs cook from a gleaming, TV-ready open kitchen. Patrons who look like they hydrate and moisturize for a living take up perches on backless bar stools. Spaghetti alla chittarra sits underneath a glass display case; the noodles are so golden and handsome one could theoretically resell them as gala-worthy necklaces.
It’s a lot to take in. If Marlow & Sons and Diner were the epitome of artisanal Brooklyn in the 2010s, Misipasta is yet another hub for Chic Finance Brooklyn in the 2020s. But you know that already, because this is the Williamsburg Luxury Waterfront District, with a burgeoning class of expensive hotels and high-rises.
Then you look look at the fairly-priced menu — with one of the city’s best new sandwiches — and you realize why you’re still here.