Coolhaus Dairy-Free Cookie Dough Ice Cream

 

I first came across Coolhaus ice cream sandwiches years ago when all they had was a food truck. Now they’ve got a scoop shop in Culver City and many, many more flavors, including a few dairy-free ones.

The night I visited Coolhaus, they had three dairy-free flavors: Mocha Marcona, Cookie Dough Lyfe, and Mango Sorbet. I sampled the mocha and wasn’t compelled to eat more. The mango sorbet… who cares? Everybody has mango sorbet. But dairy-free cookie dough — those are the magic words I long to hear.

I’ve been waiting for years for Ben & Jerry’s to come out with a non-dairy version of their chocolate chip cookie dough, and I just found out (like two minutes ago when I checked their website) that they have! I’ll be reviewing it as soon as I can get my hands on a pint. But back to Coolhaus.

As you can see from the photo above, there aren’t many chunks of cookie dough in the Cookie Dough Lyfe (bottom right corner). But I ordered it anyway, hoping for the best. You can get straight-up scoops, but Coolhaus’s specialty is ice cream sandwiches, so I got my ginormous scoop of Cookie Dough Lyfe sandwiched between two chocolate chip cookies. I was going for the full chocolate chip cookie experience.

Though this ice cream sandwich was a thing of beauty, I didn’t like it at all. The ice cream was smooth and had a nice texture, but it had no flavor. I couldn’t taste any vanilla. And the cookie dough pieces were sparse and bland as well. The chocolate chip cookies were okay but nothing special.

I ended up throwing out more than half of my $6 ice cream sandwich. That’s another thing: Why do they make them so big? You have to dislocate your jaw to take a bite out of it. So you end up eating it with a spoon, and what’s the point of a sandwich that you can’t eat without utensils?

I look a lot happier before eating.

Later I asked the guy behind the counter what the dairy-free ice cream was made of. It didn’t taste like coconut or almond, the two usual suspects. He told me, “Peas and rice.” No wonder this stuff tastes awful! When it comes to dairy-free ice cream, the only decent choices that currently exist are coconut milk and almond milk. You cannot make an ice cream-like substance from peas and rice.

But here’s what’s great about Coolhaus: It was started by two women from Los Angeles, it’s got cute branding and packaging and, for those who can eat dairy, there are creative flavors like Fried Chicken & Waffles, Beer & Pretzels, and Passover (port and Manischewitz ice cream base with chocolate-covered matzo pieces). Back in my dairy-eating days, Coolhaus would’ve been a playground.

But now it’s just another ice cream joint I’m crossing off my list.

COOLHAUS, 8588 Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232