Island Pops — Black-Owned Brooklyn

Life Hack: If you want more Caribbean flavor in Crown Heights after yesterday’s West Indian Day Parade, you can get it in ice cream form at Island Pops. Shelly Marshall, who owns the shop with her husband Khalid Hamid, says their ice pops and ice cream — in flavors like mango chow, rum raisin, watermelon mint, Ovaltine, sorrel and roasted peanut, among others —are inspired by their childhoods in Trinidad and Tobago. “When we think about a flavor, we think, ‘What are people going to feel when they taste this?’” says Shelly, 36. “Is this gonna bring them back? Because that’s what we want.”

After three years of selling frozen treats at street fairs, making home deliveries and catering private parties, Island Pops opened its brick-and-mortar location on July 14. “We got our name out there and gained a strong following in the Caribbean community,” says Shelly. “That’s how we’ve been able to be successful with our shop so far.”

So how did Shelly and Khalid first get into this ice cream-making thing? After returning to Brooklyn from a 2014 trip in their native Trinidad, Shelly came down with a bad fever, strongly craving the soursop ice cream of her childhood. But the couple couldn’t find it in their vicinity. Khalid tried making a homemade version...to unsatisfactory results.

“I was being dramatic,” Shelly remembers. “I was like, ‘If I ever get over this virus, I’m gonna make soursop ice cream!’” And she did, enrolling in a renowned Penn State ice cream course, learning, over seven days, the ins and outs of manufacturing frozen desserts.

Today you can enjoy Island Pop’s hard-won soursop ice cream, which, along with Guinness caramel ice cream and their sorrel ice pop, is one of the shop’s most popular flavors. We also recommend the spicy mango chow ice pop (flavored after a popular Trini snack of green mango with salt, cilantro and Scotch bonnet pepper) and the Nescafé coffee biscuit ice cream (coffee ice cream with crumbled salted biscuits).

“When we think about a flavor, we think, ‘What are people going to feel when they taste this?”

With sunny window seats, lush green plants and citrusy pops of yellow and orange, the bright decor of Island Pops immediately brings you into a Caribbean vibe. “When you see us, it's like family,” Shelly says moments after greeting two regulars, and pointing out her cousin and childhood friend working behind the counter.

For the fall and summer, Island Pops plans to expand with baked goods and hot drinks. “We’re gonna be making guava pudding, soursop souffles and nutmeg cookie crumbles that you can pair with the ice cream,” says Shelly. “You can come and have it with a Grenadian hot chocolate, or coffee from Trinidad or Jamaica, or a line of teas from St. Lucia. Everything you're gonna be consuming has some roots in the Caribbean.”