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Some of the L.A. area’s best and most seasonal restaurant ice cream can be found in a former Craftsman home, part of a tasting menu from a brother-and-sister team — in the first Long Beach restaurant to earn a Michelin star. Chef Philip Pretty, who runs Heritage with his sister, Lauren, purchased a home ice cream maker and began experimenting with his own base of farmers market eggs, cream and high-quality milk. At Heritage his ice cream program expanded to the point of savory notes — with options such as vanilla parsnip — and ingredients from the siblings’ own farm, like a recent fig-leaf variety featuring leaves that were toasted and then steeped in cream, later topped with honeycomb crumble and bee pollen. Perhaps Heritage’s most popular ice cream to date is the toasted marshmallow, so creamy and nostalgic it inspired one diner to offer $100 for a pint of the stuff (which, sadly, the restaurant doesn’t offer). Pretty was so taken with the quality of his ice creams that he began toying with frozen yogurt too, which he now uses as a vehicle for fresh fruit such as Meyer lemon, kumquat, strawberry and mango. Even the restaurant’s savory courses can involve some sort of frozen sweet, with herbaceous granitas and sorbets spooned over beets, tomatoes and grilled strawberries — always playing with the balance of sweet and savory, and always evolving with the seasons, as often as multiple times a month.
