Be Your Own King of Pop ( or Queen!)

Few things inspire me to leave the convenience of my home office unless I’m cooking for a client. Even when a new concept is garnering all the hype one can get, it somehow takes me longer than reasonable to get excited about trying it for myself. But when New Yorkers and others outside of Atlanta ask me about a certain food truck, I have to break out of that mold and find out for myself. For the past two days I’ve been on the hunt for King of Pops, a year old street food cart. I finally came to the spot in a perfect corner of Midtown.

An idea probably not so novel to other major cities, King of Pops is a small popsicle stand holding roughly 600 homemade sticks made with fresh fruits. En vogue flavors like Blackberry Mojito, Cantaloupe Ginger, Banana Pudding, Georgia Peach, Chocolate Sea Salt and a handful more draw anxious crowd every day. Staring at the colorful chalkboard with the flavors of the day left me no choice but to order all of them. Sound gluttonous? Sure! I justify it by having to taste all flavors du jour in order to genuinely impart an opinion. Having one (when I’m told there are at least 3 top sellers) is simply not enough to come to a solid conclusion.

Surely I couldn’t devour 10 popsicles within an hour, so I invited some thirsty friends to do a quick tasting with me. I started with the cantaloupe ginger, which has a generous dose of the root. I bit every one of them and quickly tasted what the hype was about. There’s no doubt blackberry mojito and Georgia peach made me smile the most.

To read the rest of this delicious post, visit my column on Dean & DeLuca’s Gourmet Blog here.