New York Post critic roasts Salt & Straw, Portland following chain's NYC opening
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) -- Portland’s popular ice cream chain Salt & Straw received a disastrous review at the hands of New York Post restaurant critic Steve Cuozzo on Monday.
The critique was written in response to Salt & Straw’s first New York location, which opened on Manhattan's Upper West Side on Sept. 20. According to the review, Cuozzo found Portland’s brand of ice cream underwhelming, unnecessary and, at times, inedible. It was enough for him to take aim at the company and Portland’s entire restaurant culture.
“The outfit’s weirder confections should have stayed in Portland, a city with possibly the nation’s most self-important culinary scene,” Cuozzo wrote.
The critic was “fine” with some of Salt & Straw’s classic flavors like Double-Fold Vanilla, which he called “one-dimensional” compared to a local gelato spot down the street. But the chain’s riskier ice cream flavors, like Pastrami-on-Rye, were declared “pretentious.”
“There was no joy in ‘Pastrami on Rye,’ where butterscotch ice cream is packed with pastrami sourced from the Carnegie Deli,” the review reads. “The only discernible flavor I detected was mustard. The meat crumbs ‘break down into powder,’ my appalled colleague put it.”
The New Yorker found the shop’s Pistachio Ricotta Cannoli ice cream no less gimmicky.
“It’s a stunt: If I crave pistachio ricotta cannoli, I’ll find the real thing in an Italian bakery,” he wrote.
Cuozzo said that the shop bottomed out with its seasonal Halloween specials like Jack-o’-Lantern Pumpkin, which he compared to “any Starbucks pumpkin latte.” But the harshest review was saved for Salt & Straw’s Creepy Crawlies flavor, which features chocolate-covered crickets and toffee-brittle mealworms.
“Beware Creepy Crawlies at all costs,” the Post review states. “I don’t know whether the candied insect fragments under matcha ice cream were chocolate covered crickets or toffee brittle mealworms — but the happily deceased organisms felt like they were squirming on my tongue and throat. I threw the whole thing away before I took time to investigate — and you probably will, too.”
Salt & Straw plans to open a second New York City location in the West Village "soon," the company's website states. KOIN 6 News reached out to Salt & Straw for comment in response to the review but has not received a response.