We all scream for ice-cream: Karma Cream

Upon first lick, it’s soft and creamy. The second, dense and flavorful. The third, rich and cold. Unless you read the sign, you’d never know it’s organic vegan ice-cream.



“What is ice-cream without milk?,” many complain. Turns out, it’s deliciously creamy. Made with soymilk and real cane sugar, the ice-cream is sweeter than dairy ice-cream, yet still utterly smooth.



Karma Cream is either a place you’ll love or hate, depending on if you give it a shot. While vegan ice-cream is what makes it stand out, organic dairy scoops are available too. But the non-dairy vegan cream, whose texture is softer than regular ice-cream, is the best.



Don’t believe me? Karma Cream let’s you try all the flavors you want on miniature metal spoons – more environmentally friendly than plastic ones. The maple walnut, the lemon cookie and the dreamsicle are flavors that appeal to a variety of tastes. Every once in a while, the flavors change. But the triple chocolate is simply decadent, and in a cone, it’s a contender with the best full-fat ice-cream you can find.



The crunch from the homemade waffle cones is harder than most, but it also sweeter. Like a cookie wrapped around the ice-cream, the cone is a topping in and of itself, unlike card-boardy sugar cones at other ice-cream shops.


Agave honey and sugar water are free toppings, while vegan whipped cream, homemade chocolate espresso hot fudge, pineapple sauce and all-natural ricemallow fluff are options to make your treat one-of-a-kind. Making your own ice-cream sundae is exhilarating, but building your own ice-cream sandwich using two freshly baked vegan chocolate chip cookies makes dessert more like a delightful meal. Fair-trade coffee and organic chocolate beer round out this dessert stop’s menu.



Karma Cream, adorned with local art, is a small shop nestled in the same strip shopping center as Gator Dawgs and Mother’s Pub. It’s open 24 hours, and Wi-Fi is free for those craving ice-cream when they should be doing their work. Best of all, Karma Cream boasts good karma all around. The disposables are 100 percent plant-based and fully biodegradable. And all the dairy products come from free range cows.



But don’t let the word “vegan” trick you, the ice-cream isn’t calorie free (in fact, it’s far from it), meaning it still registers on the dessert Richter Scale and is bound to satisfy any sweet tooth. Vegan or not, Karma Cream is a treat.

KP's Crumbs: An iced coffee and a scoop of the triple chocolate is all you need to cheer you up, help you study or fill your tummy.

My end of the date rate the plate: Spoon and spoon and spoon again!

Karma Cream

1025 West University Ave., Gainesville, FL, 352.505.6566

The NEW Pinkberry: Lutz

In an exceedingly modern world, fro-yo joints and ice cream shops are adapting. Of course there’s nothing quite like homemade, creamy ice cream or twisty soft serve; however, there are innovative, frozen concepts opening the door to novel indulgences. Pinkberry, a frozen yogurt chain in California, New York and Texas, has been tantalizing taste buds for years now with tart yogurt in shops just as modern as the treat it serves.  

My first experience with it was when I was in NYC. It’s all the rage there. Unlike typical frozen yogurt, Pinkberry’s yogurt is not super sweet or overly rich. People eat it for breakfast with cereal on top; people consume it in place of lunch with fresh fruit; others savor it for a healthier dessert. Though my dad says it tastes like a cross between shaving cream and chalk, I would say it’s more of an acquired taste. I’d be bluffing if I said I loved it at first bite. It actually wasn’t until my third cup or so that I really started to appreciate its refreshing, tasty and utterly addicting qualities.

The problem is that just as soon as I began to love Pinkberry, I headed back to Florida only to be robbed of my newfound enjoyment because my home state had nothing like it. Well, not anymore, baby! South Florida is finally - I repeat finally – jumping on the bandwagon and living up to its “exclave of NYC,” “most-northern-part-of-the-South” status.

Pinkberry has arrived in the form of Lutz.

Yesterday night (after much begging), I went to Lutz following dinner. The ultra-modern, colorful plastic tables and chairs, the neoteric gadgets lined up along the wall as decoration and the modish neon lights transported me back to my NYC days.

Lutz boasts the health qualities of yogurt and is proud of the fact that a half-cup is only 80 calories. It offers only two staple flavors – Original and Green Tea – and an assortment of toppings including fresh, bite-sized fruit, cereal, chocolate and mochi. Special for the summer, Lutz also offers pomegranate, blueberry and acai flavors.  

Last night, the line to order (practically out the door) reaffirmed my notion that such a place would do a killing in SoFla. I ordered a small Original with chopped strawberries and bananas. Though normally I’d skimp on the bananas and go for chocolate chips (especially at dessert-time), Lutz was all out. They were also out of fresh raspberries. Nonetheless, and despite the almost $5 price tag for a small, which is practically criminal in these times, my order tasted just like my favorite Pinkberry and made me very happy. 

Copycat or not, Lutz certainly filled my void for a quick, relatively healthy swirled treat. And I’ll certainly be taking a trip back soon. 

Hard to escape Japanese food in NYC

It’s a small world after all.

New York City. Population: about 1.2 million. Essentially, that makes me 1 in a million. And I’m running around this madhouse of a town like a chicken without a head. So how is it possible that I keep running into people I know? It’s become the norm that I bump into someone I know at least once a day. I actually find myself thinking that it is strange if I don’t. In the subway, right as the doors open to the yellow R line headed downtown- a friend from college. On the street during my dinner break - a friend from high school. And in the park – a woman my close friend Jess and I became friendly with when we were shopping on Saturday.
Apparently one in a million isn’t such a big deal. What a let down.

Hoping to escape it all, Jess and I were looking for a simple dinner. All we wanted to do is avoid Asian food because it seems that’s all we’d eat in this town. Not too much to ask for right? Wrong.

“Too expensive,” “I’m not in the mood,” “It looks bad,” “Eh, look who’s eating inside,” and “It’s closed,” all kept us from chowing down. We were looking for champagne taste at a beer’s budget. Between all of our squabbling back and forth, somehow we ended up blocks away from our flat and hungry. Jess, being a good sport, agreed to check out some hole-in-the-wall eatery that, of course, I believed sounded wonderful – “a real cultural experience.” Turns out that all our negative Nancy-isms, except for “it’s closed,” accumulated in this restaurant… after we are seated.

The food wasn’t cheap. And what do you know - it’s Asian; actually, it’s Japanese. But not just Japanese (oh no do not say that or else the waiter will laugh in your face) it’s a noodle bar. The menu is totally in Japanese and, when we look around us, we realize we are the only Americans in the entire restaurant. If I didn’t know any better, I would have bet that Jess and I had hopped on a flight to Japan and were preparing to eat our first meal there. Feeling ignorant, we asked the waiter to order for us. He brought out bowls as big as our heads filled with soup, noodles, veggies and some sort of meat (probably chicken gizzard, I kid you not). Well, I am happy to report that the food was actually pretty tasty, lasted me two meals and didn’t make me sick. But I still don’t really know what I ate.

So it turns out that I am adventurous by steering Jess and myself to a random, local place that serves fish eyeballs as a delicacy. Nice one KP. And all I know now is that I am still going to have to try ridiculously hard to not eat Asian in this city. Oh, excuse me, Japanese, which is what I attempted to avoid in the first place. Back to square one.

On our way back home, Jess and I stopped in a tiny ice-cream shop in the East Village because we both agreed we deserved a treat for putting up with dinner. Because some higher being was truly having fun with us, it turns out the sundae shop we enter is a Japanese ice-cream shop (what can I say - when it rains, it pours!) that sells sesame, red bean, ginger and wasabi ice-cream. We were done being adventurous. We settled for reasonably normal flavors (I get the Mocha Chip, and Jess gets the Maple Walnut) in the smallest size they sell. We were nearly sick after the gargantuan bowls of Ramen and the little sweet treat was enough to curb the craving just in the nick of time.