Cheese ice cream? New Bay Area shop scooping playful flavors
Owners Nutchapol Phaungjit and Suphaluk Moontha opened the cheery, bubblegum pink-hued ice cream shop at 1918 Martin Luther King Jr Way last weekend. The couple, both restaurant workers and natives of Thailand, had never made ice cream before. They experimented extensively at home before opening, recreating sweets they love like mango sticky rice or Ovaltine, a chocolate malt drink that Phaungjit grew up with in Bangkok. A cheese ice cream Moontha tasted in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, inspired Melt Me's cheddar cheese creation, with the ostentatious color of Kraft singles but a more subtle, milky cheddar flavor.
After moving to the Bay Area from New York almost two years ago, Phaungjit and Moontha decided to open an ice cream shop. Their creations are light and airy, peppered with textural mix-ins. Some ride the line between savory and sweet, like a miso caramel ice cream with interludes of salty peanut butter and brownies. Smore's ice cream is everywhere now, but Melt Me's is distinctly smoky, like someone waving a just-charred marshmallow underneath your nose. This comes from marshmallows they torch until they melt and caramelize.
The owners find inspiration in social media and pop culture. A drink in an episode of a K-drama show — lattes made with sweet corn milk are a current obsession in Korea — gave them the idea for a Korean coffee and corn flavor. (Corn milk is also popular in Thailand, Phaungjit said.) They swirl two bases, one made from Korean coffee beans and the other from corn, and then add ribbons of corn jam and smoked kernels.
Melt Me also offers a dessert that has yet to take hold in the Bay Area: a fruit freeze. Popularized by longtime ice creamery Gunther's in Sacramento, it's a refreshing, layered dessert. A scoop of creamy ice cream sits between slushy-like frozen fruits such as guava, mango or lemon.
The owners plan to keep dreaming up new flavors, rotating four every month.
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