Food in and of itself isn’t particularly metal. Sure, maybe devil’s food cake, but there’s nothing particularly Satanic about it. However, you can alter the presentation of food to make it metal and/or goth, like the Slayer pizza. Or, like Burger King you can make it black. However, if you don’t want to a) go to Japan for a burger or b) ingest squid ink, you can head to Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream on New York’s Lower East Side to experience an unprecedented new color in ice cream: dark, dark black. The store overhauled their menu earlier this week, debuting coconut ash ice cream, and it’s been getting them a lot of notice.
Owner and creator Nick Morgenstern tells Metal Insider that aside from the visual element, he was interested in coconut ash, which is a form of activated charcoal, which is said to have health benefits. “I was just curious about it as an ingredient, looking at ash activated charcoal,” he says. “I run another business where we serve food that’s pretty healthy, so we’re aware of those kinds of ingredients. I became intrigued about coconut ash. I think it’s cool that it’s a by-product of something we consume a lot, which is coconut water. This is the shell that’s been charred and pulverized.” He’d had a flavor on his previous menu called “black ass licorice,” but the licorice didn’t turn the ice cream black.
Morgenstern says when he first made it, he was really excited about it, but for a while, he was the only one. ” I’d had it as a sample for a while, and people really didn’t care, but I put it up on the new menu yesterday, and people were just crazy for it,” he says. Since unveiling the new menu on Wednesday, he says that aside from the media attention, there have been a lot of people buying it, particularly those in the fashion industry. While the unveiling of black ice cream is completely unrelated to the start of Summer, Moregenstern calls it the perfect metal or goth ice cream. “If it melts on your hands, it turns your hands black, it turns your mouth black,” he says. “This is the full package. If you’re a goth and you wear black, it just melts on you!
