Meet Monsieur Singh: Ice Cream with an Indian Twist
This week, Yahoo Food is celebrating America’s favorite dessert with a series of profiles, recipes and photo galleries all dedicated to the creamy, delicious dessert. Check out our Ice Cream page for complete coverage!
Photo: Sam Bolton for Yahoo Food
By Joanna Prisco
For years, American ice cream and Italian gelato have dominated cooler cases in our country’s supermarkets. But now, a new player in the frozen dessert aisle is taking inspiration from Eastern culinary traditions.
Meet Monsieur Singh, the tasty line of frozen lassi flavors shaking up the New York City summer treat scene.
Karan Gera, who founded Monsieur Singh, says he was inspired after doing research about the health benefits of yogurt.
“I was working on an innovation strategy for a well-known yogurt company and began researching why yogurt is so good for us,” Gera, 40. “I’d been having it since I was 4 years old, but didn’t really know anything about the health benefits associated with it.”
Growing up in New Delhi, Gera would often sip lassi — a yogurt drink blended with herbs and spices — to offset spicy curries and aid in digestion. The most common version, a mango lassi, is often served at Indian restaurants in the U.S. Still, it had never occurred to Gera that the beverage might have broader appeal.
Photo: LongIslandWins/Flickr
Identifying an opportunity to introduce a piece of his heritage to U.S. consumers, he presented the idea to his client. But they balked.
“They thought it was going to be too time-consuming and got caught up in the bureaucracy,” he said. “So I decided to do it myself.”
Upon leaving his employer, Gera connected with an expert in Ayurveda, the belief that health depends on a balance of mind, body, and spirit, back in India to determine the best recipes and ingredient combinations for making lassi.
Ayurveda is a 5,000-year-old system designed to establish balance in one’s life through specific diet and lifestyle practices. Gera maintains that according to ayurvedic principles, fruit and yogurt require the addition of herbs and spices in order to digest properly and provide maximum health benefits.
Thankfully this principle has yielded delicious results in Monsieur Lassi’s initial products, such as mango yogurt spiked with mint and ginger, and honey-lemon yogurt dotted with lemon zest and spearmint as a balancer.
After testing his recipes abroad, Gera returned to the states and decided to incubate his idea with a lassi bar pop-up inside of a friend’s spice shop in Mount Kisco, N.Y.
“We had 10 lassi flavors and it became quite a big hit with the Westchester community, who voted it ‘Best Smoothie Bar’ in the area,” he said. “Martha Stewart came in and tried the Rose Lassi with Cardamom, then sent her assistant and photographers to cover it.”
Clearly his creation was gaining momentum among foodies. But when Gera discovered there was already a lassi drink on the market, he decided to shift gears.
“I got a license to start producing a frozen version and began selling it in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, as a test — then it became a huge hit and got nominated for a Vendy Award,” he said.
Confident that he had a desirable dessert on his hands, Gera invested in packaging and began distributing Monsieur Singh frozen lassi flavors in the form of push pops and pints at New York City foodie flea markets like Smorgasburg, as well as online food delivery service Good Eggs and brick and mortar food stores, such as Whole Foods.
From pineapple and banana lassi mixed with holy basil and cinnamon to passion fruit lassi studded with chia seeds, the frozen treats are an exotic antidote to plain-Jane vanilla.
“I like these because they actually taste like Indian foods,” remarked Yahoo Food assistant editor Donna Yen, during a recent tasting.
Still, there is something to be said for tried-and-true classics.
“Mango Lassi is the favorite,” said Gera. “Just like Seinfeld said, ‘People like to say salsa,’ everyone seems to love saying ‘mango lassi.’ They already have good memories of it from dining in Indian restaurants, it feels the most familiar of our flavors, and it just tastes delicious.”
While the Monsieur Singh push pops and pints are currently only available in New York City markets, batches of the inventive frozen lassi flavors may soon find their way to the Midwest and West Coast.
“We get emails from Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Kansas asking when we will be sold there,” says Gera. “Phoenix and Florida, too. Someone from Wegman’s visited with us at the Fancy Food Show. So, I am looking into whether and when we can handle the increased volume.”
In other words, if you live outside of the Big Apple, you’ll have to chill out… for now.
More ice cream coverage from Yahoo Food:
25 Crazy Ice Cream Flavors You Need to Taste to Believe
Why Hot Fudge Doesn’t Belong on a Sundae
How to Make Raspberry & Banana Instant Ice Cream
