When it comes to making ice cream, Eddie Lopez is going for “weird” but “good.”
So you won’t find the typical vanilla and chocolate in his repertoire. When it comes to flavors, think instead of a Mexican twist on mint chocolate chip using the root beer plant or burnt tortillas with blueberries swirled in.
“Ice cream is just fun,” Lopez said, “because … [of] the endless possibilities of flavors you can come up with.”
Lopez’s path to ice cream starts with fine dining. He spent 20 years in some of the top kitchens, starting with his first job at the Signature Room fresh out of culinary school and moving to the three Michelin-starred French Laundry in Napa Valley in California. After a couple of years, he ventured to Copenhagen, where he worked at another three Michelin-starred restaurant, Geranium.
Then, in 2021, he decided he needed to move back home to Chicago to help take care of his ailing father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He decided it was time for a career change, and working in a bakery allowed him to be there for his father. Instead of 16-hour days, he could be off by noon.
“I wasn’t sure if I would be able to step into a kitchen again because at the moment dad was my priority,” he said.
Even after his father died, he stuck with bakeries. “I felt like my skills elevated after switching over to the baking world,” he said.
He helped open The Bellbird Bakeshop in LaGrange, owned and operated by husband-and-wife team Erik and Maree Hecimovich, where he works full time. But throughout his experiences, he was making ice cream.
One thing ice cream let him do was play with flavor and incorporate ingredients that speak to his Mexican culture. In his take on mint chocolate chip, you find hoja santa, or the root beer leaf, which is a staple in Oaxacan cooking. As the son of Mexican immigrants, Lopez loves to showcase his culture when it comes to pastry, baked goods and ice cream. “Hoja Santa is very underlooked and people don’t realize it’s a big ingredient [in dishes] like mole. It tastes like minty, but [also like] licorice.”
With no storefront of his own, his enterprise so far is more like a journeyman entrepreneur. He creates about 40 quarts of ice cream a week in a commissary kitchen and delivers them for sale at Bueno Days, 2901 W. Cermak Rd. in Little Village; Cadinho Bakery, 3483 S. Archer Ave. in McKinley Park; and Diego, 459 N. Ogden Ave. in West Town.
At Bueno Days, Lopez supplies burnt tortilla ice cream, which is served affogato style (ice cream with espresso) with tortilla crunch and sprinkles.
This ice cream also came about through experimentation. For pastry chefs, Lopez said the spring and summer seasons are their favorites because berries are in season. A common combination is sweet corn and blueberry.
“Tortillas are made out of corn. … And then I swirled blueberry jam into it. You’re just getting the same concept of corn and blueberry, but it’s tortillas. And then I ate, and I was like, this works. And people were like, ‘This is oddly good.’”
To make the tortilla ice cream, he takes tortillas from El Popocatepetl Tortilleria in Pilsen and lets them “burn” essentially in a comal, getting them toasty and golden brown. Then he lets the tortillas sit until they get crunchy, like a tostada. After heating up his liquids (milk and heavy cream for dairy, plant-based heavy cream and oat milk for the vegan version), he pours the liquids over the tortillas to infuse. After 24 to 48 hours, he strains the liquid to use in his ice cream base.
For Novel Pizza in Pilsen, where Mexican and Filipino flavors are on showcase, he offers a mazapan (a Mexican candy made of peanuts and powdered sugar) ice cream, also served as an affogato.
Lopez’s goal is to open a bakery in Brighton Park to showcase the pastry skills he’s honed over his career “while bringing forth my Mexican culture.”
“I grew up with conchas and bollilos, and I love it. But around here, you can’t walk anywhere and get a laminated dessert, like a croissant. You can’t get sourdough bread,” Lopez said. “I feel like the kids that grew up in this neighborhood should be the ones to bring that kind of stuff [to the neighborhood].”
In addition to baked goods, he envisions a spot for dessert tastings, takeovers by his pastry friends and ice cream,naturally.
The key to making good ice cream, Lopez said, is “attention to detail and getting those temperatures right,” to avoid the dreaded scrambled egg effect. Making ice cream may seem easy, but “it’s those little details that you have to get right” — an attention to detail that was well honed during his time in fine dining.