Tastes Great, Less Filling
If they’re not perpetuating Italian stereotypes in cell phone ads, then they’re reminding us of that damn landfill:
Posted: June 13th, 2007 | Filed under: Staten IslandStaten Island Borough President James Molinaro is having a meltdown over a frozen treat called Staten Island Landfill — one of eight flavors made by New York’s own 5 Boroughs Ice Cream.
“I’m outraged and disgusted that you would name your Staten Island-themed ice-cream Landfill,'” Molinaro wrote in an angry letter to the company founders.
In bright red type stripped across the top of the borough president’s Web site, Molinaro yesterday called on local businesses to boycott the company.
Kim and Scott Myles, the Queens couple who founded 5 Boroughs Ice Cream in their Astoria kitchen in 2002, said they wanted to take the Ben & Jerry’s concept to an urban extreme — and they meant no harm.
“It’s got chocolate hearts because it’s a flavor with heart,” Kim Myles, 33, said of Landfill, a vanilla ice cream stuffed with brownie chunks, heart-shaped chocolate crunchies, chocolate fudge and cherries.
Landfill does seem a bit harsh compared with the other more whimsical flavor names: South Bronx Cha Cha Chocolate, Bay Ridge Amaretto Amoré and Jackson Heights Mangodesh. And there’s NYPB, a peanut butter-flavored chocolate ice cream, with 5% of the profits going to the New York Police & Fire Widows’ & Children’s Benefit Fund. But another flavor has a cold bite to its name: Upper East Side Rich White Vanilla.
“The upper East Side suffers from a stereotype, that everybody is white and everybody is wealthy,” said the chairman of the neighborhood’s Community Board 8, David Liston.