You'll find no wacky or even classic ice cream flavors here. Essentially they're just variations of the same thing. There are 7 menu options, each with milk soft-serve + set toppings. The shop is bitty - essentially a stall - with the menu resting above their serving booth. We ventured there last Friday night, hoping to kick off the weekend with a scoop of heaven. Their Sawtelle location has been open since 2015 and is one of a whopping 16 shops in California. You can also find Honeymee, a popular soft-serve shop with sufficient online buzz and a consistent line to the door. Here you can find anything from ramen and sushi to curry and sweets. Check out Mashti Malone's if you’re looking to try a different style of ice cream as well as knock off an LA standby along the way.Īh Sawtelle, the Asian food mecca of the west side. Overall they offer a range of regular and exotic flavors at a fair price. Other than the flavor profiles, what felt most wild about the ice cream was its almost loose, elastic quality. It's made by heating the dairy before adding other ingredients, which makes for a distinctive flavor. Translating to bastani in Farsi, Ice cream is referred to by many Iranians as akbar mashti, after one of the first makers of ice cream in Iran. Though the flavors were adventuresome, our need for cooling down from an afternoon in the sun might have curbed our confusion over the consistency of the ice cream. No idea why we split the cup honestly, we were delirious at this point. How often do you get to try Date, Ginger Rosewater, French Lavender or Herbal Snow (rosewater and lime sorbet with basil and poppy seeds)? With so many unique tastes, it was difficult to narrow it down but eventually we settled on sharing Turkish Coffee and Creamy Rosewater in a cup. With two cases to run through - classic flavors on the left and Persian flavors on the right - we asked the server to take us along the Persian side. The place is small with modest design, sporting two ice cream displays, a pint fridge and a couple dining tables. Housed in a nondescript strip mall, Mashti Malone’s has been serving their Persian-style ice cream since 1980. Mashti Malone's was waiting at the ready on our list, so we screeched over to N La Brea and beelined it for their shop. Reaching the car huffing and having lost about 10 collective pounds in sweat weight, we knew ice cream would be the only remedy. As you can assume, the trip back down the trail was hurried, uncoordinated and desperate. And yet, our naive selves were determined to climb and so climb we did up the nearly vertical incline with no tree coverage. If you're questioning our judgment at this point, don't worry, we did too the moment we arrived on site.
Things we did not consider: the time of day (arriving at noon) and the temperature in the mountains (90+ degrees).
We couldn't stay inside, and decided to drive over to Franklin Canyon and hike around. It began on an innocent lovely Los Angeles morning.