True fans of sweets concur that the craving for a creamy, icy scoop of ice cream cannot be satisfied by any amount of unfavorable situations.
You lack gloves and are too impatient to keep your hands in your pockets, so it doesn’t matter if it’s 40 degrees outside, it’s raining, and your fingertips are getting numb. It makes no difference if little ice pellets begin to fall from the sky as you wait at the bus stop. The most devoted of us are aware that ice cream is a dessert that can be enjoyed in any weather.
Additionally, it’s not a problem if the ice cream flavor is a little out of the ordinary, which is not implausible in Portland. If you visit your neighborhood ice cream shop, you may discover delicious egg custards sandwiched between vanilla and chocolate.
Cloud City Ice Cream has joined the trend after being recently selected Portland’s top ice cream business by readers. The business, located at 4525 S.E. Woodstock Blvd., celebrated the return of its famous teriyaki sauce to its shelves by collaborating with Yoshida Foods, a local marinade company. With a complementary ice cream flavor, what better way to celebrate?
Cloud City is offering a scoop of Grilled Pineapple with a Caramelized Teriyaki Drizzle till the end of the year.
Let me go right to the point: It’s incredibly good.
In addition to being swirled with ribbons of sticky teriyaki sauce, the ice cream itself has a subtle pineapple flavor and is primarily vanilla. A scattering of dried pineapple chunks on top gives the mixture a chewy texture and a tangy, tropical punch. It has the zest of summer, which is welcome in the middle of November.
With a new ice cream flavor that incorporates the sauce, Cloud City Ice Cream is commemorating the return of Mr. Yoshida’s famous teriyaki.Veronica Nocera
Although I generally have no trouble arguing for any unusual flavor combination, I don’t think this particular crossover needs much persuasion.
Don’t get me wrong, it tastes like teriyaki sauce—that ideal blend of sweetness, salt, and savory flavor—as soon as you take your first bite. In essence, though, isn’t teriyaki only salted caramel with a hint of umami? Why wouldn’t that work as a mix-in for ice cream, really?
Ice cream isn’t particularly sweet on its own, so it makes sense that something with a little more bite would provide much-needed balance. This is why salty-sweet combinations are so popular. (Food creators attempt to persuade me to put soy sauce on ice cream on my TikTok corner, so this is just a more socially acceptable version of that.)
It’s also likely that Portland-made and bottled Mr. Yoshida’s sweet teriyaki sauce is simply that good. In the Pacific Northwest, the marinade has a cult-like following and is a pantry staple that families love to purchase in big bottles during their monthly trips to Costco.
On November 18, 2024, Yoshida Group founder and CEO Junki Yoshida samples Cloud City Ice Cream’s new teriyaki sauce-based flavor.Veronica Nocera
Junki Yoshida, the company’s creator and a native of Japan, began producing teriyaki sauce in 1982 in the basement of his karate school in Seattle.
In 2000, he sold the company to Heinz. Although it was still successful abroad, Yoshida himself quips that while bottles in Japan were flying off the shelves so fast, people must be bathing in sauce. This wasn’t the case in the US. Rather, bottles gradually vanished from American shelves, a change that was not ignored.
But don’t worry: When Yoshida Foods revealed in August that they had acquired the business from Heinz, devoted customers were overjoyed as bottles returned to Costco and internet merchants.
Now that I have an unopened bottle of Mr. Yoshida’s teriyaki sauce in my refrigerator, I’m searching for non-dessert pairing ideas. Some claim it’s revolutionary for broccoli. Some claim that it tastes delicious when drizzled over a savory pancake.
However, I have nothing against swirling it into a bowl of vanilla ice cream if everything else fails.
Veronica Nocera writes on culture and life. She can be contacted at 503-221-8111, [email protected].
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