For most purveyors of artisanal ice cream, winter is a cruel season. Families and friends gather to share slices of pie, their holiday dessert plates piled with spoonfuls of whipped cream. At best, store-bought pints of generic ice cream take a supporting role. But this year, Patricia Gangan and Matthew Esparza created a clever workaround for their pop-up, Chunky Butt Ice Cream.
The couple made three ice cream flavors for Thanksgiving and collectively named them Pints for Pies, “crafted to complement your table.” Vanilla Dream to pair with Dutch apple, chocolate chess or berry pies; Spiced Maple for pumpkin, sweet potato or lemon meringue; and Almond Stracciatella to accompany bourbon pecan, cherry or banana creams.
During our phone interview, they told me they plan the flavors based upon ideas Gangan keeps in her notebooks. They make the batches when it intuitively feels like it’s the right time to do so. “Trish is the mastermind,” Esparza said. “She thinks of the flavors and which ones go with each other.”
He also said she doesn’t sleep. Not only is she the mother of their two-year-old child, but ideas perpetually percolate in her head. “We decided on Pints for Pies a week and a half before we released them,” she said. The Christmas flavors have yet to be determined.
Like many other food concepts which appeared during the past couple of years, Chunky Butt Ice Cream began as a pandemic pop-up. Both Gangan and Esparza worked as “savory cooks” until the restaurant industry closed its doors to the public. Subsequently, they began making ice cream in their Oakland apartment. “Some people like cake, pies or tarts, but our go-to is ice cream,” Gangan said.
While working for a commissary kitchen, Esparza learned how to make the custard ice cream base. While some home cooks kneaded sourdough starters into loaves, the couple decided to invest in an ice cream machine to experiment with flavors.
“At the time we were working as Instacart drivers, so we knew firsthand how hard it was to get basic necessities,” Gangan said. “Ice cream is a basic necessity for us.” After posting photos of their ice cream batches, people began to message them. “We started delivering pints, one at a time, dropping them off in front of people’s houses,” she said.
As interest grew, they increased the number of batches, and pop-ups. “We had a space in Emeryville,” Gangan said. “We would open on every other Sunday, and people would line up.” They’ve since moved to Pinole but haven’t decided whether the Chunky Butt business model will be wholesale or brick and mortar.
In the meantime, they’ve held pop-ups across the East Bay—in Albany, Alameda, El Cerrito and Pinole. Gangan and Esparza sometimes partner with other businesses. A recent ice cream cake featured barako beans from Minorya Coffee and a honeycomb crunch from the Berkeley confectionery store Petite LaFleur.
Gangan grew up in the Philippines. Her notebooks are filled with original flavor combinations that reflect her heritage. She might start with a traditional ube base but then she makes it “Chunky.” A pint of ube mallow includes torched marshmallow and brown-butter rice krispie treats. Ube, Gangan said, is starchy and sweet. “It’s kind of weird, but people love it,” she said. In the Philippines, she ate ube as a jam that’s cooked for hours, the same way dulce de leche is made.
While Chunky Butt’s pop-ups are on hold during the bleak midwinter, specialty market Of All Places on Solano Avenue is the primary distributor of their ice cream pints. For East Bay residents in the mood for a cup of coffee and a scoop of ice cream, another recently opened pop-up, Acorn Café in Oakland, serves up both on Sundays until noon.
Chunky Butt Ice Cream, full-sized pints at @of.all.places and single scoops at @acorncafe.oak. IG:@chunkybutticecream.
