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Get ready to have Secret Breakfast whenever you want it, Berkeley.
Today, Humphry Slocombe, the San Francisco scoop shop known for its legendary bourbon and corn flake ice cream, opens its second East Bay shop in the Elmwood space where Chez Panisse alum Mary Canales ran Ici for 12 years.
“It was a no-brainer,” says co-founder Sean Vahey on Friday, looking around the College Avenue location, which has been re-done in Humphry Slocombe’s bright blue and white motif. “As soon as the space became available we knew we wanted to be here and honor what she did.”
He’s referring to high-quality, small batch ice cream made with hyper-local ingredients. Vahey and co-founder, pastry chef and flavor mastermind Jake Godby, have been crafting their culinary-inspired flavors — Peanut Butter Curry and Harvey Milk & Honey Graham come to mind — since opening the original Humphry Slocombe shop in the Mission in 2008. Expect lines this week in Berkeley, especially on March 28, when they offer free ice cream with a suggested $1 donation to Project Open Hand.
In addition to Secret Breakfast, Berkeley will be scooping the classics, like French Vanilla and Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee, alongside newer vegan flavors, including Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana, made with 78 percent dark chocolate, natural peanut butter and banana puree.
“We like to call it vegan by accident,” Vahey says. “We’re making ice cream with a lot of flavor that anyone can enjoy. So everyone is invited to this vegan dance party.”
The Berkeley shop — Humphry Slocombe’s fifth — will serve as Godby’s creative space to come up with his bold and unusual offerings. “Our shop in San Francisco is more of a commercial kitchen,” he says. “This is going to be more like a lab.”
They’re already in talks with Berkeley purveyors, including TCHO Chocolate, The Rebel Brewery and St. George’s Spirits. Pear eau de vie ice cream? Yes, please.
When asked about his creative process, the pastry chef says, “I just make what the voices tell me.” He thinks for a moment, then adds that it is often as simple as balancing flavors, like he did with Matcha Lingonberry. “It kind of popped into my head,” he says. “I wanted something tart with the matcha and I didn’t want to do raspberries.”
And Secret Breakfast? “The name came first,” Godby says. “I was still conceptualizing what the shop would be and I was on a road trip with some friends in Ohio. I was trying to explain what I wanted to do and my friend, Eric, just blurted out ‘Secret Breakfast.’ It just clicked. I had been making bourbon ice cream for many years. Bourbon’s made from corn. Corn flakes.”
Humphry Slocombe is known for its clever collaborations, too. The most recent, with Netflix’s “Queer Eye,” is Cookies & Graham, made with chocolate cookies and graham crackers in an olive oil ice cream. When he tasted it, “Queer Eye” food and wine expert Antoni Porowski declared it “creamy and milky and so good I don’t even care that I’m semi-lactose intolerant.”
Come April 1, look for Violet Milk Chocolate, inspired by the “Charlie & The Chocolate Factory” debut at SHN Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco. Godby makes the ice cream with violet liqueur, milk chocolate and chocolate wafer cookies he bakes himself.
Could it be the next Secret Breakfast? It’s got the booze and the crunch.
