Gelato at Acero and Ice Cream at The Crossing

Usually I wouldn't review ice cream or gelato I get at a restaurant. In fact, I wouldn't normally get ice cream or gelato at a restaurant; I would get a meal and then go somewhere else for lunch. Or I would use it as an opportunity to enjoy a dessert other than ice cream, what a shock. However, this past weekend when I dined at Acero in Maplewood with my boyfriend's family and Acero's sister restaurant, The Crossing in Clayton with a friend's family, I learned they both make their own gelato and The Crossing recently started making their own ice cream as well. In addition, both of the dessert menus featured different desserts a la mode.

A bit of back story, this past weekend was Washington University's graduation weekend, so there were many celebrations to be had, which was the cause of all this going out to eat.

I am combining my reviews of these frozen desserts because of the coincidence that I dined at these sister restaurants in the same weekend, and because I don't have a ton to say about what I got at either place. Not because what I got wasn't tasty or interesting, but for two reasons. One, I didn't eat much of the frozen desserts I got at either restaurant. You know how those fancy restaurants go, as price goes up, portion size goes down. I could have loved to eat much more of the frozen desserts than I was served. The second reason, I was not eating these frozen desserts in their pure state. I tried a couple bites of the frozen dessert alone, but I ate most of them the intended way, with the other dessert with which they were served.

The waitress accidentally which is why this pic isn't quite as pretty. It also melted a bit before I snapped a pic because I was trying to be be discreet about being one of those people that takes pictures of the their food.  

I will go in chronological order for my reviews. First, was Acero, an Italian restaurant in Maplewood.  They make their own gelato and serve Serendipity ice cream. I decided on the strawberry and rhubarb fried pie served with cheesecake gelato. I don't love cheesecake flavors, as I'm sure you know by this point, but I couldn't pass up fried pie. Also, Brett was getting the chocolate mousse with coffee gelato, which was the other item I was thinking about. I was pleasantly surprised with the flavor of the cheesecake gelato. It actually tasted like cheesecake and not anything gross and artificial. It also tasted strongly of lemon, which I thought paired nicely with the cheesecake flavor and the strawberry rhubarb. If all cheesecake ice cream/gelato was made this lemony, I don't think I would eat much else. The texture of the gelato was harder/chewier than I expected and smooth.

Brett's mousse and coffee gelato. The gelato seemed to be more like espresso gelato than coffee gelato. It was delicious.

The Crossing is a restaurant in Clayton. They have made their own gelato from their beginning, but have recently started making their own vanilla ice cream, as well, because they go through so much of it. So of course I got the chocolate torte served with vanilla ice cream to try it out. The ice cream was sweeter than I was anticipating. I did not expect such a fancy shmancy restaurant to go for such a traditional tasting, sweet vanilla flavor, but they did. In awesomeness, however, it couldn't stand up to the torte it was served on (nom nom nom) so I don't have more to say about it!

I hope you enjoyed this out of the norm blog post! Blogging about restaurant ice cream and gelato isn't something I plan on doing often, but I thought both of these experiences were so fun I should share them with you, Dearest Readers!