New York · ice cream
Chinatown Ice Cream Factory
An immigrant-founded shop whose Asian-American flavour list was not a borrowing but the point, from 1978, and is still made by the founder's family at the same Bayard Street address. Its menu was shaped by customers asking for things — durian arrived that way, over the shop's own objections.
What we know
- Founded in 1978 by Philip Seid and still trading at the same Bayard Street address, now run with his daughter Christina
- The flavour list — lychee, durian, pandan, ube, black sesame, squid ink — was original to Chinatown in 1978, decades before craft shops began borrowing from it
- Durian was added because customers kept asking for it, against the shop's own initial reluctance
- The squid-ink flavour was developed deliberately as an alternative to the coconut-ash black ice cream then in fashion
- Growth is capped on purpose: the family will not expand past what it can stay personally involved in
- Status
- open
- Address
- 65 Bayard Street, Chinatown, Manhattan, New York, NY 10013
- Maker
- Philip Seid, founder, and his daughter Christina Seid
- Opened
- 1978
- Website
- www.chinatownicecreamfactory.com/
- Last checked
- 2026-08-21
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