Little Damage Ice Cream: Haunted Hues

We all get stuck in our food loops, those tightly hemmed-in patterns where all we want to do is eat corn chips dipped in marscapone with a side of tomatillo salsa.

Like, every day.

But the ultimate food loops, those patterns which we can never seem to escape or even leave behind for a day, often involve how we think an edible should look, feel, be. Cotton candy should be pink, a lemon is yellow, and milk is, well, a milky shade.

So what color, in your food-focused mind's eye, is ice cream? There's a garish gamut, of course, from bubblegum bright to pistachio green. But, in general, and we're just going out on a limb here, or, rather, a very long spoon, ice cream is not traditionally gray.

Little Damage, the family-helmed Spring Street ice-creamery, is not about tradition, and is about a host of lickable sweets that don't fit into anyone's expectations of what a cold, frosty dessert in a cone should look like. These buzzed-about soft-serve ice creams have been deemed "goth" or "brooding" by some, making a purchase of one an act of counter-programming to May's sunshiny ways.

If the gray-gorgeous Almond Charcoal isn't your pleasure, there's always sky-blue Unicorn Tears (and Fruity Pebbles add a rainbow-mazing touch).  

A fuschia Just Beet It, the Mango Sticky Rice cone, and Coconut Green Tea are just a few of the other stroll-and-bite picks at the downtown dessert destination.

We mean, that is if you bite your ice cream, instead of licking it. No judgment; you definitely don't want the pointy top toppling over. Understood.

And while we're at it, cotton candy doesn't need to be pink — blue's just as tasty — and chocolate milk and strawberry milk have their own glorious hues, colors that can't be described as "milky."

Leaving our loop, of what food should look like, is a promising thing, as is a towering gray cone of Almond Charcoal ice cream at Little Damage.