Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream

I have been wanting to try their ice cream for a while.
decided to stop by their venice location (which is just a truck parked on abbot kinney) on the way home from a beach day.
they had unique flavors to offer which is why I’ve been wanting to try it.
the employee was friendly
I got their vegan mint and chip and errmagawd it was so good !!! I could taste the coconut milk which complimented the mint perfectly.
guess it’s on the pricy side but you’re paying for unique flavors you can’t get at thrifty so stop complaining it’s expensive. it’s ice cream, enjoy it and the scenery around you!
worth a try!

My first time and I am in love! I really couldn’t decide so I had three of the vegan flavors: banana, chocolate, and pistachio. They were all amazing with banana being my favorite! My husband had non-​vegan vanilla with caramel which he loved and also finished what I couldn’t eat! We’ll be back! Highly recommend for vegans and non-​vegans alike! My favorite of all icecreams!
ps this is an OLD review for the food truck that got stuck in Unilocal! but I decided to ‘finish’ it anyway because I LOVE Van Leeuwen sooo much! They have now opened a brick & mortar store at Culver City Landing. OMG I am in heaven. Vegan Ice Cream from Van Leeuwen is my favorite treat in the world and I maintain theirs is the best and far outranks any other you can find — be it from a restaurant, store, food truck, or anything else!

To be clear, the vegan ice cream is excellent. However, it’s overpriced and the vegan ones are more expensive than the dairy ones. It’s a great place to go to treat yourself every so often, but you will blow your wallet if you go more often than that.
For flavors, I highly recommend the peanut butter chocolate chip or the chocolate chip cookie dough. The matcha is too sweet and the mint chip didn’t taste quite right though I can’t quite put my finger on why. And the sundae comes with way too much whip cream, so you might want to ask them to go easy on that.

Never have I ever had ice cream this delicious! This past Sunday was a hot one, and passing up on this trucks tempting flavors was hard to do. My boyfriend and I ordered a scoop of strawberry and one of the peanut butter chunk to share, with a vanilla scoop for our puppy. The strawberry tasted as if they had just picked the berries from a field and made them right there! The peanut butter was so incredibly decadent that I simply could not believe it was vegan! The scoops are a perfect portion for the quality of this ice cream because it is so rich and delicious! Stella on the other hand devoured her scoop in a matter of minutes, giving her the strength to trek back to the car. I just wish they sold this ice cream in every shopping mart! Three scoops (one in a cone) for $ 17 is a little price, but worth every penny consider what you are getting. Please go on shark tank or find an investor because this product is incredible!

They were in front of The Broad. Decided to give them a try. eh.
Dudes that were working were decent. didn’t look that happy or friendly. eh. I asked for samples of Pistachio, Ginger, espresso, and pint chocolate. I thought the ginger was pretty good, Espresso kind of tasted like regular coffee ice cream. nothing too special. had a good flavor though. not too sweet and not bitter at all
got the pistachio and mint chip. the pistachio was okay… It wasn’t too sweet but it didn’t taste too special… I think it was the vegan flavor unless they’re both vegan? Because somehow my bill was $ 6 instead of the posted $ 5.50… NBD i guess. anyways. the mint chocolate chip. i thought it was overly sweet. that’s all I really recall… Expensive for something sub-​par.

Some of their menu is gluten-​free. They change their menu every so often so pay attention.
This ice cream truck was not hard to miss on Abbot Kinney. The staff was friendly.
Ordered a regular, which comes with 1 or 2 scoops/​flavors. You can mix and match. I got the espresso and the pistachio. The espresso was like any other espresso flavored ice cream. It was bold and creamy. The pistachio was not as nutty, which I really liked.
They’re known for their early grey ice cream, so definitely try that when you’re there!

This is VEGAN ice-​cream at its best! Of course, they also have non-​vegan ice-​cream. And yes, it’s $ 5.50 for a small size but honestly, it’s pretty worth it.
For vegan ice-​cream, the consistency was quite impressive and had I not known, I would have mistaken it for real ice cream. This is not usually the case when I’ve had vegan ice cream in teh past — sometimes, it’s a little runny, chunky or bland. From the few flavors that my group tried, my very favorite was the earl gray flavor (which is not vegan). The earl gray ice cream was perfectly flavored and tasted like it had just the right amount of honey and bergamot. I would definitely recommend this ice-​cream truck if you see it. Also, their cutlery/​bowls are biodegradable.

Yeah. It’s expensive, but you get what you pay for. The strawberry was sensational. You don’t need whip cream, you don’t need nuts… just eat the damn ice cream.
Way better than most of the crap out there.

What can I say about this ice cream? Just right: not too sweet, creamy or sugary. Only thing that’s not just right? The price. $ 5.50 is expensive for one scoop even if it can include two. Oh well, all gee.
We got the mint chip– right amount of mint and Iike that it wasn’t green lol. The earl grey tea was also good. Could taste the black tea with a hint of cream.
Would I have some again by choice? Price makes me hesitate even though it was yummy

I had pistachio vegan ice cream. It was so creamy and rich that you can’t believe it’s vegan! I’m not a big fan of ice cream, yet I love how they make it and would definitely come back to try other flavors!

NOTE: this is a TRUCK.
One time I came looking for this place and the lady in the store at the stated address said she gets asked about ice cream oddly enough. I thought it had gone out of business
They have a twitter for the schedule: usually friday evenings (8−11pm), all day saturday and sunday.
flavors do have an «artisan» feel but nothing to write home about:
the chocolate is rich tasting
you can really taste the vanilla
the pistachio is just not bad.
The reason I really didn’t like this place is that for 7.50 $ +tax +tip for three very medium scoops I got ice crystals the size of A NAIL (no joke) in 2 of my scoops: Ice kills ice cream, it dilutes the creamy texture, it dulls your taste buds, and it overwhelms the flavors.
So, what’s going on here?

wow — we LOVE the van leeuwen VEGAN ice Cream — the Venice truck only carries 4 vegan flavors, but they are all awesome (we have often begged them to carry the vegan version of their salted caramel, as they do in their NYC store, but have not been successful yet)
and if they used organic ingredients, they would get an easy 5 stars from us!
also can’t wait for their store in downtown LA to open

Ice cream without attitude would be appreciated. Question we posed: do you have organic or vegan soft serve? A: «no, we don’t and we never will. ice cream is our business and we don’t want to do the McDonald stuff! we do ice cream…»
Wow. So we said: aaa…we’re giving you feedback on a potential market that you could expand to, since it doesn’t exist as far as we know in LA and it is organic, or vegan soft serve with raw cacao toppings or other beautiful raw organic fruit choices, how is that relevant to the comment you just made? If you firstly really listened to the customer, instead of getting defensive and going on a rampant about an irrelevant topic, you may have simply answered us with something along the lines of: that’s an interesting idea, tell me more about it…
I can tell you that we’ve had the organic vegan soft serve in other places outside of LA and it was amazing. And it was a question and if you were a bit more present, you would have taken it as feedback instead of giving us the ‘whatever’ snooty attitude. We were so excited to find you as we were looking for some kind of an ice cream. You are not ‘doing us a favor’ by bringing such an approach to us. We help you make your business sustainable. So its an exchange. Do yourself a favor and Watch the energy of your servers. We won’t come back to you again.

The ice cream was good. The tall blondish woman serving it to us was not. She was such a negative Nancy that I will not be back, even though the ice cream was quite good.
I’m pretty sure serving ice cream to people, especially children, is the last job on the planet you should assume if you’re not a people person. Just saying.
She also seemed really annoyed by providing samples to patrons. I requested 2, and there was no one waiting behind me. Again, you probably shouldn’t work at an ice cream truck if you’re going to grimace when someone wants to try a flavor so they know what to get. That’s kind of part of the deal.
Overall, she ruined the experience and joy of getting ($ 6) ice cream on a hot day. I don’t mind paying for quality ingredients, but it should come with a bit of politeness, respect and tolerance for human beings. Not sure who owns this place, but I suggest you consider getting friendlier employees.

I saw everyone walking down Abbot Kinney on a sunny Sunday afternoon eating what looked like small batch artisan ice cream, and I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, but then I saw the truck.
They have both regular and vegan flavors. I tried the coffee crunch vegan, which wasn’t bad for vegan, but it doesn’t do the ice cream justice. The earl grey was my favorite — it had good tea flavor and wasn’t overly sweet. The chocolate was also super intense and well churned.
I’m glad we stumbled upon the ice cream truck — it definitely hit the spot!

I bookmarked several Vegan-​friendly ice cream shops in the Venice/​Santa Monica area. Knowing it was gonna be a scorcher down there, I knew my babygirl would require a sweet treat if I was gonna make as many brewery stops as possible.
Van Leeuwen wasn’t first on the list. They just so happened to be parked out front near Intelligentsia where we had enjoyed an overpriced coffee. I’m sensing a theme with this neighborhood… Since we had miraculously found street parking on this busy strip, we weren’t about to pass up trying this «artisan» ice cream truck.
It’s been many years since I’ve bought ice cream from a truck. Dang, inflation is a bitch! The $ 1 ice cream sandwiches of my youth are now $ 8 bowls of cashew based Vegan ice cream. It’s $ 6 per scoop or you can get an extra scoop for $ 2 more.
They were out of the pistachio which looked amazing. We ended up getting Coffee Crunch in it’s place. The coffee flavor was excellent, as was the creaminess. I’m not sure if I like eating it by itself since the crunch comes from the coffee bean grinds that are laced throughout the light brown ice cream. It would be great in a sundae, I’m sure of that.
The Banana Nut was spectacular! One of the best ice creams I have had from any restaurant. This is coming from a truck with less overhead, so why am I paying way more for this than say Kind Kreme?
I don’t mind paying a «Vegan tax» but to charge $ 5.50 for a scoop of dairy ice cream is insane. I can’t believe people actually pay that much when you can get good tasting cow milk ice cream most anywhere. That almost makes the extra $ 0.50 for the Vegan version look cheap.
This trendy ice cream truck slings some fabulous tasting ice cream. However, for my money, Steve’s
makes the very best ice cream that you can buy. It’s $ 7 or less per pint from the store (if you can find it). But if you can’t find it, this truck will do the trick in a pinch.
After all this hating on the cost, why still give it 4 stars? Simply because I am a fan. You just don’t get the same experience scooping out your own ice cream from a store bought pint than you do from savoring a tasty cone while walking down the street.

the truck was parked in little osaka and i’m so damn glad i had the opportunity to try it. i love artisan ice cream and their flavors are not a joke! they have tons of vegan options too which is great! i got the earl grey, black tea, yuzu citrus, bergamot tea ice cream. that’s all one flavor which was delicious! i do admit that the prices are pretty steep, a scoop is basically the price of an entire tub of store bought ice cream but definitely worth a try.

Oh god I wish i lived closer! This vegan ice cream was AMAZING! I loved it and if you see this truck in Venice (one that I jay-​walked to get to!) then definitely go! They have regular ice cream and vegan ice cream. I tried the banana vegan ice cream that had nuts in it and I thought it tasted better than the dairy version. A must!

Excellent earl grey ice cream and goat cheese ice cream! The ginger ice cream was a bit too grainy.
I would love to eat this ice cream again. And I know my ice cream!

I’d been wanting to try this truck since my days living in NYC so when I heard that they were in LA, I was excited. I’ve looked for them on Abbott Kinney before without success so when I finally saw the truck, I decided to grab a couple of scoops.
For $ 5.50 (small), you have a choice of 1 or 2 scoops of regular or vegan ice cream. The regular flavors were all relatively basic — vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, mint chocolate chip, peanut butter, pistachio, espresso, earl grey, and ginger. One creative «flavor of the month» was goat cheese with berries, which was actually pretty good although I couldn’t imagine eating an entire scoop of that as it was very rich.
The scoops of chocolate and strawberry that I got were good and it was clear that they use quality ingredients. But, for $ 5.50, I probably wouldn’t ever «crave» this ice cream unless different flavors really drew my attention back to the truck. Perhaps the popularity of the truck comes with the fact that they have vegan options, which I didn’t taste.