May 3, 2016 – Fulfilling a long-held dream, Ron Mendoza—pastry chef at the exclusive Aubergine restaurant in Carmel—is stepping down in June to open his own gourmet ice cream shop called Revival on Alvarado St. in Monterey.
“I’m going to try and take my whole 16 years of fine dining experience and bring it into an ice cream shop,” he says.
In preparation, Mendoza has been traveling around the country visiting ice cream shops from Portland to Brooklyn, sampling lots of ice cream and gathering ideas to make his new venture a success.
“It’s not going to be the kind of place you would go to get a banana split,” he says. “You’ll get something different, almost like a plated dessert.”
For example, he plans to serve dishes like ice cream make with fresh Swank Farms corn topped with whiskey meringues and puffed grains or Kaya Singapore-style coconut milk ice cream flavored with pandan leaves—a dairy-free and gluten-free indulgence. Another flavor he plans to offer is pear and celery root, which he calls “clean, crisp and refreshing.”
Mendoza has more than 60 flavor ideas saved on his google drive—a list he’s been compiling over the years while working at Aubergine.
“I like ice cream and I like to make it, so for a long time I’ve been basing my desserts on ice cream,” he says. “Like today a box of cherries came in and I’m fermenting them for ice cream, then I might add chocolate cake and ganache. It’s easier for me to come up with the ice cream flavor first.”
The chef-driven business will offer ice cream cones, sorbets, popsicles, ice cream sandwiches, ice cream pies and cakes, and floats—including a kombucha float. While it will be mostly take out, there will be six to eight seats inside, as well as sidewalk seating. All containers will be compostable.
The 1,300 sq ft location is just a couple of doors down from the wildly popular Poke Lab in a new building that will allow him to build the exact kitchen and pasteurization facility required. Revival is aiming to open in late August.
“I want to be very detail-oriented and run it like a restaurant as much as possible,” he says. “Not everyone is going to be able to eat at Aubergine, so I will get to make food for more people.”
Mendoza says he was especially inspired by the community feel of Salt and Straw in Portland and the amazing flavors at OddFellows in Brooklyn—where chef Sam Mason uses ingredients like miso and foie gras in his ice cream creations.
Mendoza hopes Revival will be an integral part of the fledgling local food community in Monterey. “Right now there is no place to go for ice cream, the closest artisanal ice cream is Penny in Santa Cruz,” he says, adding he plans to make everything from scratch using produce from local farmers and collaborating with other food artisans such as Happy Girl Kitchen.
As the name Revival suggests, Mendoza is passionate about helping Monterey return to a time before mass-produced food and franchises were the norm. “There should be multiple chef-driven bakeries, there should be a local butcher and every community should have an ice cream shop. We should be able to provide people with artisanal trade for everything.” he says.
Mendoza was selected for a Local Heroes Award as “Best Pastry Chef” by the readers of Edible Monterey Bay in 2015. Read our story here. He is offering a class on preparing desserts with local produce at Holman Ranch’s “In Your Backyard” series on May 18. Click here for tickets.
About the author
Deborah Luhrman is publisher and editor of Edible Monterey Bay. A lifelong journalist, she has reported from around the globe, but now prefers covering our flourishing local food scene and growing her own vegetables in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
