Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan, husband and wife owners of Rustic Canyon Wine Bar & Seasonal Kitchen and Huckleberry Cafe & Bakery (Santa Monica destinations for both the seasoned foodie and the merely epicurious,) have finally launched their highly anticipated Sweet Rose Creamery in Brentwood.
Located on the southwest corner of the Brentwood Country Mart, this not your typical Mom & Pop or retail-chain ice cream shop. While most ice cream parlors make ice cream from a pre-manufactured base, Sweet Rose Creamery proudly creates its small-batch ice cream completely from scratch for complete flavor and quality control. Loeb and Nathan are entrusting master ice cream and frozen yogurt mixologist Shiho Yoshikawa, formerly of San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery and Slanted Door, to fulfill their vision of offering customers truly organic and ‘home
made’ ice cream products with an emphasis on good old fashioned yumminess rather than outlandish flavor trends.
“We’re not making crazy experimental flavors,†says co-owner Loeb. “We want to do stuff you want to eat on a regular basis.†Sweet Rose Creamery will serve ice cream, sorbet, ice cream sandwiches, ice cream cakes, milkshakes and root beer floats, “anything you can think of that’s ice cream related.†Yoshikawa will make 12 flavors of ice cream and sorbet per day, based on seasonality.
As for ambiance, Loeb and Nathan know what works and tasked Montalba Architects and Sarlan Builders (the same design and building team that worked on Huckleberry Cafe & Bakery) to transform the former beauty salon space at Brentwood Country Mart into a gourmet “retro modern†ice cream parlor. “The Mart has its
own design which is country barnish,†says Loeb. Certain to be a special treat for customers of all ages, there is a glassed-enclosed production room where customers may watch the ice cream being made. Perfect for lazy afternoons of ice cream licking and people watching, Sweet Rose Creamery also offers an outdoor patio facing 26th Street, and counter seating that wraps along the windowed perimeter of the shop.
When asked why he and his wife, pastry chef Zoe Nathan, chose Brentwood Country Mart for the location of their latest venture, Sweet Rose Creamery, Josh Loeb stated, “I grew up in Santa Monica, so I grew up going here. I probably went to Reddi Chick 6000 times between the ages of 6 and 18.“
“We realized that there really wasn’t a good ice cream shop on the Westside,” explains Loeb. When Yoshikawa, his friend and former gourmet baker at Loeb and Nathan’s Huckleberry Cafe & Bakery, expressed her interest in the concept, the trio were off and running to rectify the situation. To say the least!
Yoshikawa and her team of sweet treat masters create everything from scratch – not only the slow-churned rich ice creams and yogurt sorbets, but also the toppings and other ingredients that get mixed in to make your new favorite flavors. If you have a hankering for a strawberry ice cream sandwich with gingersnap cookies, a fresh coconut and chocolate-fudge ice cream pop, a decadent butterscotch-crunch sundae replete with warm caramel sauce, pecan brittle and whipped cream, or a take-home burnt-to-order marshmallow cream topped ice cream pie, then Sweet Rose Creamery could prove to be your little slice of Heaven in Brentwood.
