During the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival this year there was a dedicated event to icecream. Messina and others represented the local market and the international act was Big Gay Ice Cream from NYC. Other than the attention grabbing name, the high regard (and cookbook) made it an attractive deal.
The signature dish from these guys during the MFWF was the Tim Tam Slam. Although they only setup shop for a few days, the Tim Tam Slam was still available to order freshly made on any day.
I did go on one of the non-official days and delightfully ordered this special. What I received was a pretty disappointing result. The icecream felt topped or mixed with cream and really didn't have much in the way of vanilla flavour let alone any visible beans. The standard Australian Tim Tam had been crushed underneath and plunked on top to make it special. Seriously if this is the best the USA can do in terms of icecream or gelato, there is a long way to go.
You can argue a few things here - they didn't serve it themselves (who knows how it was bastardised and ruined in their absence), the soft serve is different texturally to icecream and so I'm critiquing a different product here (yes soft serve is what 20 years ago McDonald's used to do for 30c and most of us have matured from that flavour, mush texture and price point). But if you're going to give your brandname and reputation to a product, it should be good. And sadly this was really ordinary.
(I know this isn't strictly a NYC branch issue but again, see last point.)
For comparisons, my last few years included:
http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/gelato-trail-italy-07-2012,
http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/dooleys-the-ice-cream-tub-apollo-bay-02-2016,
http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/bibelot-melbourne-03-2016,
http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/pel-gelato-and-sorbetto-hobart-01-2016,
http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/frugii-dessert-laboratory-canberra-12-2015,
http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/cow-and-moon-sydney-05-2015,
http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/gelato-secrets-ubud-12-2014,
http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/amorino-gelato-lisbon-10-2013,
http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/gelataria-sincelo-porto-10-2013.