(Image source from: The American Bazaar)

A common Indian summer ice cream ‘Kulfi’ is wooing the New Yorkers with a contemporary name, Kulfi pops. The frozen Indian dessert is getting a spot in the menu of upmarket restaurants to modest eateries in New York.

Junoon NYC, a Michelin starred luxury Indian diner in New York City, has introduced the very delectable kulfi pops. The chefs at Junoon have given it an American relatable quality by naming their neo-Indian dessert kulfi pops, with a taste of definite Indian kulfis. So you can choose from a pan, or rose petal-flavored kulfi to mango or saffron-cardamom to roohafza rabri pops.

The Indian confection made of condensed milk and sugar is also available in Queens at a Pakistani kulfi bar with the name of Al Naimat. Here you can order kulfi with falooda, vermicelli-shaped noodles in flavors such as rose.

At Malai Ice Cream in Brooklyn, you can further get a taste of Indian flavors such as chai and turmeric.

At Babuji’s, the nostalgia Indian restaurant that came up in Union Street a couple of years ago, you can satiate yourself with kulfi frozen in tin conical cones, exactly the way, an Indian granddad or grandmom would have brought for you. Here the kulfi is made of thick buffalo milk for the right taste and texture and simmered for six hours before adding slivers of pistachios - just the way the mohalla halwais (neighborhood sweet makers) have been making for generations in India.

At Shahi Kulfi you can order a pop in flavors like mango, rose, pistachio or mango. For about two bucks, it is the best summer slurp you would have. Here you would find plenty of Indian bodega selling pakoras, samosas and, of course, the new New York favorite that is inviting more and more Americans – the kulfi pops.

By Sowmya Sangam