Sweet Republic, Scottsdale, Arizona: America's Best Ice Cream

Food is a huge part of my life.  I make lots of sauces from scratch, cook with game, and vacation around trips to nice restaurants like Alan Wong's in Honolulu, Wild Ginger in Seattle, and Alinea in Chicago.  So I don't know how I have waited this long to go to what is emerging in the national food press as one of the premier ice cream joints in America, the artisanal, high-cuisine Sweet Republic in Scottsdale.  Now that I have gone, I may need to lease an apartment across the street.  This is certainly one of the very finest dessert restaurants in America, the finest of its type I have ever seen, a must-visit.  I seldom blog food, but I simply had to share this on dag.

First, the artisanal ice cream flavors are whimsical, creative, and delicate, but still cover the traditional ice cream bases.  I'm a chocolate guy, and had my choice among a dark chocolate sorbet that was classic dark-chocolate bitter, pure ice-style sorbet without fat or cream, a Belgian chocolate that was rich, creamy, and almost buttery without fatty aftertaste like most ice creams, and a chocolate with rosemary, where the rosemary was neither a forward element, nor ever quite absent (in short, just right).  I went with the Belgian chocolate and a particular espresso ice cream made from one distinctive African coffee, which was sharp, yet sweet and the epitome of ice cream smoothness.  The best chocolate and coffee sweet combo I've ever had, and folks, I live on gourmet chocolate and coffee.  The lycheetini sorbet, with a very forward lime was a great sample.  If you check out the Internet menu (which doesn't even reflect all of the flavors I saw), you get a real sense of the thought and art at work:  Roquefort Cheese and Medjool Date is a flavor.  Bananas Foster.  And on and on.

Second, the owners really welcome you.  They ask whether you've been here before, and try to talk to you about what they do.  When I signed up for the e-mail list, co-owner and chef Jan Wichuyanaparp thanked me.  I mentioned my interest in high-end food, and she asked right away if I had ever had bacon for dessert.  We discussed Vosges' wonderful Mo's Bacon Bar, and how it paired the darkness of chocolate with the salt and smoke of bacon.  She produced a free, heaping sample of Sweet Republic's own bacon-flavored ice cream (they make one batch for the weekend only, and of this weekend's batch, only bits remained at the store's opening Sunday afternoon).  The taste was fascinating, the salt and smoke of bacon, but surrounded by the highly contrasting pure sweet cream taste of an ice-cream base.  When I mentioned how different that contrast was from the Mo's bar, she explained in detail that Sweet Republic had tried three methods of making bacon ice cream before settling on candying the bacon first, to prevent it from seeping bacon into the cream, thus preserving the sharp and playful contrast this ice cream displays.  So they do exciting and creative things with food, and want to share and explain and build your enjoyment and understanding.  It is a special place.

Third, though it's not really the point, the attention to detail in this place is amazing.  The decor is refined Pacific Rim Asian-cum-Manhattan, where the two proprietors originally met as they worked in the financial industry.  The bathroom is nicer than that in most gourmet restaurants.  The wooden sticks for ice cream on a stick are sustainably harvested in Maine.  The chocolate chunk walnut cookies on the counter look perfect, and are immaculately presented under glass.  There are two art-deco orange sofa chairs for the inevitable waits, while the furniture for those eating is spare, friendly, and comfortable.  Board games are provided.

But all that is beside the point.  As pleasant as the physical setting is, the high quality ingredients, the novel treatment of a stalwart food like ice cream, the attention to craft shine through.  If you visit Phoenix, you must go to Sweet Republic.  As I told the owner, it really lived up to the hype (a top ten in the nation mention in Bon Appetit, for example).  So here's a bit more hype for her and her wonderful store.