Salt & Straw Comes to NYC

This beloved Portland-based ice cream brand will open two (count ‘em two!) ice cream shops in the city this summer.

Kim and Tyler Malek, founders of the beloved ice cream brand Salt & Straw, are bringing their ice cream to New York City this summer, opening two shops: one in the West Village [540 Hudson St] and a second on the Upper West Side [360 Amsterdam Ave]. 

To celebrate the summer opening, they are popping up next Friday April 26th outside their West Village store on the corner of Hudson at Charles and scooping their Cannoli ice cream from 1pm-3pm. Scoops are $1 and all proceeds go to Hot Bread Kitchen,

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As you may know, Salt & Straw is a Portland-based ice cream shop known for its monthly changing menus of chef-driven flavors, led by award-winning chef and co-founder Tyler Malek, a Forbes 30 under 30 and Food & Wine Best New Chef. 

Tyler co-founded Salt & Straw with his cousin Kim in 2011. He had been studying business in China when his stepdad was diagnosed with cancer and passed away. “It was so devastating,” he told me when we chatted. “I had been living abroad, and it was a wake up call. I needed to be home with my family.” 

When he returned home, he started cooking and found that food was a way to heal. “I was cooking for my family,” he said. “The power of food was fascinating to me. It has this super power to bring people together in hard times and good times.” 

Tyler had finished business school and was enrolled in culinary school when his cousin Kim shared her dream of opening an ice cream shop with him.

Kim had worked at Starbucks at its early stages and had become enamored with the idea of “Third Places” — places beyond the home and work that offered a way for folks to build community. “I thought an ice cream shop would be a different way to manifest that,” she said. “We can use ice cream to provoke conversation and to encourage people to put down their phones down and talk and meet.”  

When Tyler learned about her plans to open an ice cream shop, he went out to the local GoodWill, bought five ice cream machines and started testing flavors. He’s never stopped. Together they founded Salt & Straw, building the beloved creamery from a small ice cream pushcart in Portland, Oregon in 2011, to a nationwide brand with locations in the Pacific Northwest, California, Florida, and Nevada.

But they’ve always wanted to open in New York; Danny Meyer is an investor, they popped up at Daily Provisions last summer with lines around the block; they also partnered with Musket Room for a collab dinner this past Valentine's Day and reservations were booked in a matter of hours.

After six years of trying to find the right space and the right time To expand eastward, this summer, they are bringing their scoops to New York City. “We are humbled to be walking into NYC, and have been trying to open here for six years,” Kim told me. “But it took some time to make it happen.” 

As with the other shops, the menu includes a rotating cast of 12 core flavors like Cinnamon Snickerdoodle, Double Fold Vanilla, Arbequina Olive Oil, Salted Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Honey Lavender, and more, plus a specialty menu of five flavors that changes the first Friday of the month, leaning into themes like Local Brewers, Flowers, Berries, and Chocolatiers. 

For the month of April they have been doing Upcycled flavors like a Passion Fruit Yuzu Mochi Donut Whey Curd, using upcycled whey from The Spare Food Co., and Malted Chocolate Barley Milk that is made from EverGrain, a company that uses spent beer grains to make protein-packed barley milk. There’s also a Chocolate Caramel Potato Chip Banana Bread made in partnership with Urban Gleaners—a non-profit working to reduce food waste and fight food insecurity—that rescues bananas from local grocery stores, then delivers them straight to Salt & Straw to be turned into ice cream!

For the New York stores, the cousins are planning a special opening menu that will include core flavors inspired by iconic bakery favorites like babka, cheesecake, and cannoli. The cousins are also exploring partnerships with local food startup entrepreneurs from the Hot Bread Kitchen incubator. 

Kim is excited to see that sense of community and joyful energy that has become so much of the fabric of the West Coast shops, grow here in NYC as well. “We have swarms of people outside the shop, but the thing is, the line is not just a line,” she said. “It’s a way for people to meet. We have seen people get engaged, get job offers. People are buying each other scoops all the time.” Our lines bring people together and allow people to get to know each other.”