Q: What are the best places for ice cream, restaurants, not ice cream shops?
Tom: Easy. 300 East has been the Charlotte ice cream dessert capital for years. Offering a rotating series of ice cream specials, using seasonal ingredients, they are explosions of flavor as well as possess textbook creamy mouthfeel. Plus there is always the Dilworth restaurant’s signature seasonal ice cream sandwich and the Callebaut brownie sundae. Special mentions go to the pistachio gelato and raspberry sorbetto at Albertine and whatever Faith Morley is concocting for Counter-’s high-concept menus.

Q:  What do you think are the next hot ingredients to start showing up on Charlotte menus?
Tom: What a great question! Let’s put aside hyperseasonal produce, and focus on, for lack of a better term, pantry/dairy case items. With the recent insurgence of Mediterranean concepts, labneh is already popping on Charlotte menus. I can see the thick Turkish yogurt showing up as a contributor to many mainstream restaurant dishes pretty easily, and in some cases, already have. There is currently a groundswell building for gochujang, the Korean fermented chili paste, making its way to non-Asian restaurants. Expect to see it as a wing option, in exotic burgers, a spicy vegetable stir fry, or a smashing Bloody Mary. I can also see the Southern staple sorghum regaining in popularity in everything from vegetable glazes to cocktails. Just a gut feeling on these, of course, but you asked what I thought.

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