At Arling­ton’s New City Micro­cre­am­ery, max­imum fla­vor on a walk­able block

Why: for a taste of sum­mer in fri­gid tem­per­at­ures, from an expand­ing local ice cream empire.

the back­story: co-owner michael kas­seris grew up in Bel­mont in a res­taur­ant fam­ily. his dad owned theo’s Pizzeria, with loc­a­tions sprinkled throughout the sub­urbs. he grew up eat­ing ice cream at the late, great Bailey’s ice cream par­lor on leonard street. he also has fond memor­ies of going to the lib­rary on Arling­ton’s mass Avenue strip, a few blocks from his new­est busi­ness.

kas­seris first opened new city in hud­son, as a com­pan­ion shop to his suc­cess­ful Rail trail flat­bread com­pany. But, des­pite his fam­ily pizza chain, his par­ents weren’t eager for him to carry on the leg­acy.

“often, with fam­ily busi­nesses, you’re told: ‘this is your future.’ But, in my case, my par­ents were telling me to get an edu­ca­tion and not do the food busi­ness, but i really loved it,” he says.

he did both, earn­ing an mBA from Bab­son col­lege and cement­ing a busi­ness plan: pizza and ice cream shops. now, there are new city store­fronts in cam­bridge, chest­nut hill, and sud­bury, along with the hud­son flag­ship and the brand-new Arling­ton loc­a­tion.

kas­seris chose the loc­a­tions with a com­munal philo­sophy in mind.

“We’d like to be a third space for com­munit­ies and fam­il­ies. Although it’d be cool to be in some hip, trendy neigh­bor­hoods someday, i think we con­sider places that have fam­il­ies, a neigh­bor­hood, din­ing, and walkab­il­ity. they have some sort of an X factor,” he says.

What to eat: scratch-made ice cream using dairy from had­ley’s mapleline farm, frozen in liquid nitro­gen for extra-quick, smooth cool­ing. this res­ults in a dense, almost chewy tex­ture, which kas­seris calls “very new Eng­land.” to per­fect his craft, kas­seris traveled around the world from san fran­cisco to Europe — “any­where they were mak­ing inter­est­ing styles of ice cream” — for inspir­a­tion.

he also works with pastry chefs tom kepner and Alyssa lieber­man, both of whom exper­i­mented with liquid nitro­gen and frozen emul­sions at craigie on main.

As such, these fla­vors are ima­gin­at­ive: nutty bak­lava is a sig­na­ture (and it really does taste like bak­lava, com­plete with flecks of phyllo dough); so are golden dubai chocol­ate with a spicy car­a­mel found­a­tion and chunks of pep­pery pista­chio, and my son’s per­sonal favor­ite, salted cook­ies and cream with homemade oreos coated in salted fudge.

there is also an array of clas­sic fla­vors like chocol­ate and mint chip, plus a few vegan selec­tions. scoops are gen­er­ous; a $4.75 kid­die cup weighed in like a small. Add your favor­ite “gravy” — “hawt” fudge, pea­nut but­ter, car­a­mel, straw­berry — for $2 more. Just one quibble: no small to-go tops for those who don’t want to linger in the teensy shop.

What to drink: there are floats and milk­shakes (no frappes), plus sea­sonal spe­cials like dubai chocol­ate mocha and red vel­vet “hawt” chocol­ate.

the takeaway: An invent­ive ice cream par­lor on a fam­ily-friendly block, with fla­vors that appeal to kids and adven­tur­ous adults.

New City Micro­cre­am­ery, 311 Broad­way, Arling­ton, www.new­city­mi­cro­cre­am­ery.com

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