Sweet Rose Creamery (Los Angeles)

Flavors this visit: Rosemary date salty pistachio (recommended) + Caramelised white chocolate gelato (solid) + Chocolate (solid)

Price: High, 3 scoops $7.50, no splitting scoops, two tasting permitted

Details:   Sweet Rose Creamery is a Los Angeles-based chain of high quality, creative ice cream flavors - everything from candied kumquats and salty pistachios or fig compote with cinnamon wafers to meyer lemon buttermilk sherbet and paige tangerine sorbet (yes, some of this fancy-ness is the unfortunate trend of tacking on adjectives to reasonably standard flavors - a la the rampant Berkshire Pork-ification of menus.)  

Of the three flavors, the rosemary with date and salty pistachio was the most successful.  To be sure, it's not for everyone, a bit savory with very pronounced rosemary flavor, it's as if Sweet Rose borrowed a Persian page from the popular fellow ice cream joint Mashti Malone.  Definitely interesting and worth a taste.  The chocolate, recommended by the server as "different" and which may have been malted chocolate, tasted almost like chocolate sorbet (which it wasn't) and, while texturally interesting, flavor-wise was non-distinct.   The most milquetoast was the caramlised white chocolate gelato.  White chocolate is almost always problematic as a flavor - not as strong as regular chocolate, and the caramelisation, such as it is, didn't seem to draw much out.  Texture-wise, it also wasn't very gelato-y.  I also tasted the old rasputin stout, which, one can only say, is very stout-like.

Having been to Sweet Rose Creamery before, the best flavor to try is the fresh mint with home-made chocolate chip, which is very good.  Some of the sorbets are also very good, but more on a case-by-case basis.  In general, the orange sorbets are accurate but not as interesting over a full scoop.  

Also, of the many locations, the one in The Grove is the best in terms of decor and staff.