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Your next Lower East Side art outing could come with hot cinnamon churros and a swirl of dulce de leche.
Softville, now open at 137 Orchard Street between Rivington and Delancey, brings together Australia’s Gelato Messina and New York’s Studio Jeremyville into a dessert shop with creative ambitions. The 2,500-square-foot space is Messina’s North American debut, pairing gelato-style soft serve with sculptures, art installations, collectible ceramics and rotating exhibitions.
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Pastry chef Eva Wintersteen, formerly executive pastry chef for the Il Buco family of restaurants and bakery and previously head chef at Supermoon Bakehouse, is working with the Messina team on a seasonal menu of sundaes and specials. The lineup includes a Pavlova sundae with meringue, a piña colada creation with upside-down pineapple cake and dulce de leche with hot cinnamon churros. You can also assemble your own dessert, choosing from sauces, crunches, baked additions and toppings made in-house daily.
The soft serve itself uses gelato-making techniques, with fresh milk sourced from Ronnybrook Farm Dairy in the Hudson Valley. The menu also includes non-dairy options and an open kitchen lets visitors watch the chefs at work.
Beyond the sundae situation, Softville’s Creative Club will offer regular drawing clubs and workshops led by Jeremyville and guest artists and evolving cultural programming. That gives the space a participatory side: after checking out the work on display, you can make something yourself. Designer Sarah Carpenter worked with Studio Jeremyville on the interiors, set behind the building’s original curved glass storefront from the 1920s.
The partnership has been in development, in one form or another, for more than two decades. Studio Jeremyville has created neighborhood-inspired murals and artwork for Messina’s Australian stores and recently directed the design of its grocery ice cream range. “It’s exciting to take our long-standing partnership with Studio Jeremyville to a new level through Softville, bringing together world-class gelato and New York creative culture in a truly unique new format,” Messina founder Nick Palumbo said in the announcement.
For New Yorkers whose artistic practice currently consists of doodling during meetings, a drawing club with a sundae nearby seems like a promising next step.