FOOD & DRINK

FOOD

& DRINK

Ziggy Whip ice cream flavors have included Angostura bitters, galia melon and bay leaf.

PHOTO: PROVIDED

OTR’s Punk Creamy Whip

The Ziggy Whip walk-up window offers innovative ice cream flavors, piping hot hand pies and plenty of vegan options with a changing weekly menu and a show-flyer aesthetic

BY SAMI STEWART

David Jackman was sitting at the bar at Collective Espresso in Over-the-Rhine when he got wind that the nearby The Takeaway was reopening.

The Main Street deli and bottle shop had been hibernating for the winter and opened up again at the start of this summer. Since its inception, The Takeaway has doubled as a home for pop-up restaurant concepts via its walk-up window on Woodward Street (e.g. Boombox Buns, Pata Roja Taquería).

With that in mind, Jackman asked The Takeaway if he could run a restaurant out of the window and shortly thereafter opened Ziggy Whip, the city’s newest creamy whip and certainly the only one to offer “handies” — Ziggyspeak for hand pies (get your mind out of the gutter).

Jackman works alongside his wife, Lydia, as well as Ethan Bartlett. The trio has decades of culinary experience between them and the résumés to show for it. Prior to starting up Ziggy Whip, Lydia ran the foodservice at Oakley Wines and The Rhined, Bartlett was at Sleepy Bee and Jackman was the sous chef at the now-shuttered Please. Now, they’ve combined their expertise to bring their own concept to life.

“We didn’t want to just start working in other restaurants and keep putting our ideas to the side,” Jackman says. “We had been working in enough restaurants at this point that we just wanted to work for ourselves.”

With a go-ahead from The Takeaway, the world was their oyster. The team shares a love of ice cream (the seasonal Putz’s, near Northside, is unanimously their favorite), and opening a creamy whip came up while brainstorming restaurant concepts — but certainly not one that would blend in with the rest of the city’s offerings.

They wanted to set themselves apart from the usual ice cream shack lineup by offering “savory things and fun ice creams that are different from a normal whip,” Jackman says.

Most creamy whips around the city offer food of the concession-stand variety — coneys, hamburgers, walking tacos — but Ziggy Whip offers “beautiful adult hot pockets,” Bartlett says. “They’re delicious and fun and not something you can get elsewhere.”

They’re made with an olive oil crust, which provides a unique texture that is neither flaky nor doughy. And unlike pastries with butter or lard crusts, they’re easily veganized.

In fact, vegan options abound at Ziggy Whip. One of the two weekly handy options, the sorbets and the side of vegetables — which Jackman calls the unsung hero of the pop-up — will always exalt local produce and remain plant-based. Recently, bite-sized chunks of summer tomatoes were bathed in a whipped tofu and yuzu sauce and adorned with dill flowers, shiso and slivers of fresno chilli. Now that is a side of vegetables.

Like everything else on the menu, the hand pies reflect whatever seasonal goodies are available locally. A few weeks ago, Lydia tapped into her Tennessee roots and whipped up a vegan tomato pie with chickpea, olive, basil and a sunflower dip. Hand pies are $11 and come with a sauce to salve your singed taste buds. Just like all other pocket pies, these hold their heat with a death grip and you’ll struggle to muster up the patience to wait until they’re properly cooled to dig in.

More impressive than their ability to muster up a brand new menu chock full of intriguing, even off-the-wall flavor combinations is Ziggy Whip’s ability to tempt omnivorous guests into abandoning their usual orders and opting for equally enticing vegan dishes.

“We can’t just do self-serving flavors because we’re in the hospitality industry and part of hospitality is taking care of people,” Jackman says. “It’s about giving people the option to go the other route.”

The same goes for the scoop list, which is half ice cream and half sorbet and features flavors that are both approachable — vanilla, blackberry, dulce de leche — and distinctive — Angostura bitters, galia melon and bay leaf, one of the most captivating flavors thus far. The bay leaf scoop is a calming green hue you’d expect to taste like spearmint. Instead, it’s herbaceous and fruity yet reminiscent of cold-weather comfort food.

When concocting new flavors the trio asks themselves, “How can we make something as familiar as we can while still playing with all the things in the palate of seasoning?”

You can experience any flavor as a standalone scoop or a select few weekly flavors in sundae form. Scoops default as doubles — $5 for a cup, $6.50 for a buckwheat sorghum waffle cone (not vegan). They’re nutty and a little salty thanks to the buckwheat, but they’re also rich and slightly sweet because of the sorghum. You get all the crispiness without the lacerations on the roof of your mouth thanks to bread flour, which has a higher protein content and gives the cones their solid, yet giveable structure.

If cones aren’t your thing, you’re vegan, or you’re feeling like embarking on a culinary journey, opt for a sundae for $7.50. Just don’t expect simplicity. In fact, it’s best that you leave all expectations at the door, er, window.

A few weeks ago, Ziggy Whip started pulling cotton candy by hand, which resulted in a galia melon sorbet topped with lime leaf cotton candy, cucumber candy and young coconut.

More recently the team adorned scoops of marzipan ice cream with caneles, red wine jelly, lemon thyme and more marzipan.

They allow themselves unhinged culinary exploration within the bounds of a simple menu that they rework weekly. You can expect to get handies, ice cream and a side of vegetables, but you’ll have to wait to find out which varieties until they drop the new menu on Instagram (@ziggy.whip.pop).

Similarly, the Ziggy Whip owners follow the same menu design format, but swap out certain elements, echoing the simplistic but unique offerings. Drawing from Jackman’s adolescent years spent in the Punk community, where the abuse of the library scanner/ copier gave way to a stack of show flyers, the Ziggy Whip menus are equal parts ransom note and Punk show poster.

“Inspiration for the brand came from attempting to avoid the aesthetic of common brands,” Jackman says. “We wanted it to stand out but also have a DIY aesthetic without feeling cheap. I wanted the project to feel like it had the same community-driven feeling I grew up around.”

In the future, the team plans to pack their ice cream into pints and sell them around the city. For now, they’ll be your weekend warriors to sate that craving for something new and unexpected but comforting and delicious at the same time. “We’re finding ways to keep the theme of fun new flavors,” Jackman says. “Keeping it very exciting and fresh and not really the same as anywhere else.”

The team also has been working on a restaurant concept called Malus for nearly a year. It will fall under the same ownership umbrella as Ziggy Whip, but the only thing the two restaurants will share is “an ethos of seasonality and quality,” Jackman says.

He says Malus will be a “neo-bistro concept based around an experience of breaking bread. Whether it’s a casual bite or an extended menu shared among friends, we’re trying to rewrite what high-end food is in a more casual way without removing the caliber, just removing the pretension.”

They haven’t set an opening date for Malus, but it’s on the horizon. “We’re trying to find the right space for it, the right funding,” Bartlett says.

Ziggy Whip’s menu of ice creams, sundaes, sweets, hand pies and veggies changes each week.

PHOTO: PROVIDED

Ziggy Whip specializes in creatively-filled hand pies.

PHOTO: PROVIDED

Ziggy Whip is located at the walkup window in The Takeaway on Woodward Street in Over-the-Rhine. They’re open Friday and Saturday. For more info, hours and menus, visit instagram.com/ziggy.whip.pop.

THE DISH Q&A with Executive Chef Leroy Ansley of Over-the-Rhine’s New Pearlstar Oyster Bar

INTERVIEW BY SEAN M. PETERS

Cincinnati’s newest oyster bar is nearly ready to open, soon set to offer fresh tastes from the ocean (and much more) in Over-the-Rhine.

Executive Chef Leroy Ansley will oversee the kitchen at Pearlstar, located at 1220 Vine St. While the interior undergoes a redesign, Ansley is no stranger to this building — he was culinary director for A Tavola at the same address for three years.

“It is full circle that I get an opportunity to build another restaurant in this space,” he says.

Born in Kansas City, Ansley has lived in Cincinnati for 11 years and has since made a name for himself in the culinary scene. His career has taken him from fishing boats in the Virgin Islands to a year at Nada and his aforementioned stint at A Tavola. More recently, he has served as executive chef for Queen City Hospitality Group, first with Senate in Over-the-Rhine and then opening up Senate Blue Ash in 2017. Ansley says he’s excited to return to Over-theRhine and to create something new in a familiar space.

Pearlstar is expected to open this summer.

CityBeat: Talk about the team behind Pearlstar — who’s to thank for your upcoming opening? Leroy Ansley: I was fortunate to cross paths with Terrell Raley, and after meeting with him, I knew I wanted to help him on this new venture. He is a successful restaurateur based out of Nashville and this is his first restaurant outside of that market. He operates Butchertown Hall and Liberty Common, both of which are great eateries in Nashville. He had a strong vision for what he wanted Pearlstar to be and I am excited to be able to work with him on bringing Pearlstar to Cincinnati. 3CDC was also instrumental in helping the vision get off the ground.

CB: How did Pearlstar’s concept originate? What seemed to indicate Cincinnati needed another spot to eat oysters? LA: Pearlstar is one of those concepts that there is so much you can do with it. In the truest sense, it’s an oyster house that’s going to source really fresh ingredients and allow those ingredients to speak for themselves. However, I know you have to expand the menu past the signature idea of what it is. For that reason we will have a lot of vegan and vegetarian options, po’ boys and tostadas, steaks, ceviche and crudos to name a few. We didn’t want to do just seafood; we really wanted it to be a place where you can have something for everyone. I also believe Cincinnati is ready for some awesome oysters on a huge patio. I used to love going to The Anchor on Thursday nights for their oyster specials. There is a market for it, and I hope we can be a welcomed addition to the Over-the-Rhine dining scene.

CB: Where do you source the oysters? What’s important in a good oyster? LA: The key with oysters is freshness — obviously, that is not groundbreaking. But there are so many different flavor profiles the bivalves offer that we intend to showcase. We will offer oysters from the East and West Coast as well as the Gulf Coast. You want them to be velvety in your mouth with a beautiful liquor of tasty briny seawater.

CB: How’s the buildout going? There’s bocce ball, as well? What else can we expect and when are you set to open? LA: The buildout is going strong and we should be wrapping up the construction phase any day now. We wanted the space to feel completely different than what has been here before and I believe we accomplished that. Terrell did a great job on the design aspect of the restaurant and patio. It will be light and airy, somewhat nautical but transition to a candle-lit sexy-space at night time. I am very excited with how it turned out and can’t wait for people to come in and check it out. Also, the patio will have an outdoor bar and two bocce ball courts. Anyone that has been coming down to Over-the-Rhine for years will remember playing bocce at Neons, so we had to incorporate that into the buildout.

A spread of dishes available at Pearlstar, which offers more than just oysters. PHOTO: PROVIDED CB: What’s the most important thing for CityBeat readers to know about Pearlstar right now? LA: I want Pearlstar to be approachable to everyone. As much as we love oysters, I know they are an acquired delicacy. So we built a spot where, if you don’t like oysters, you can still come and enjoy some great food in a truly beautiful setting. Pearlstar, 1220 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, pearl-star.com. Pearlstar Executive Chef Leroy Ansley