Jerm Pollet: Ice master

Though Austinite Jerm Pollet was born in New York, he’s been calling Austin home for quite a few years. Playing in the band The Total Foxes, performing in the Sinus Show at the Alamo Drafthouse, and entertaining audiences at ColdTowne Theater and the Hideout’s Thursday Night Awesome, Jerm’s become a big part of Austin’s live music and comedy scenes. And now he’s doing another project that’s allowing him to share his talents and creativity with the city: making and selling Mix Masters Italian Ice.

Jerm Pollet: Ice master 

Jerm Pollet Can we start the interview by me asking you a question?

That Other Paper Yes.

JP How did you like your dessert?

TOP It was very tasty and made me thirsty.

JP Made you thirsty for more ices.

TOP So what other flavors are there than this chocolate one?

JP There’s chocolate, lemon, cherry, black cherry, vanilla, grape, orange, and banana split. So there’s eight in total. I may do this like the Soup Peddler did it in the beginning. Do you know his story?

TOP No.

JP I don’t know if I’m familiar with his entire mythology, but if I’ve got it right, he started off on his bike delivering gallons of soup to the neighborhood.

TOP Is this like the pied piper?

JP No, this is a real Austin legend. But now he’s all over town, and I think he has a truck — he’s no longer on a bike. I was thinking of following in his— Well, you wouldn’t call them footsteps… his bike tracks.

TOP But you’re not actually selling this on a bike. You’re selling Mix Masters at Home Slice Pizza, right?

JP Well, I was thinking of being The Icyclist and accepting orders online. But, yes, Home Slice is the first store to carry Mix Masters. They are the first place I went to because they are the authentic New York slice in town, and they are the perfect match for me. I knew they would understand Italian ice and how to enjoy it authentically.

TOP How do you know how to enjoy Italian ice better than most?

photo / Jerm Pollet Jerm Pollet serves up some tasty treats outside Home Slice 

JP It’s not a competition, but I grew up in New York City. Italian ices are on every corner and in every pizza shop. And every pizza shop had the same brand of Italian ice: Geno’s. My first idea was to distribute Geno’s here in Austin, but I actually spoke to Geno’s nephew on the telephone and he said, “What do I need to go to Texas for?” and I said, “Well, they all need it here. All they’ve got here is snow cones. It’s like licking an ice cube tray. It’s terrible.” But he said, “Geno won’t even go to Jersey. He’s not gonna go to Texas. You wanna make a good Italian ice, you make it yourself. I’m not gonna tell you how to make it, but I’ll tell you this much: Don’t be cheap. Use real fuckin’ fruit. Use real chocolate. We may have a big factory up in Queens, but we’ve still got a guy on a ladder above a copper pot chopping up a watermelon. That’s why when you get a Geno’s Italian ice with watermelon, you occasionally find a seed.” So, that’s where I got the idea. Geno’s nephew told me I could do it.

TOP Do you do all the cooking yourself? You don’t have a man chopping watermelons because you’re the man, am I correct?

JP I am the man.

TOP Do you have any combination flavors?

JP I was selling out of the parking lot of Home Slice during SXSW for their music festival, Slice by Slice West — I don’t know if that’s what they call it, but that’s what I call it. I was selling out of a little cart, and my first customer was a Philadelphia native. He said, “I’d like the chocolate and cherry.” And I said, “You’d like two ices?” And he said, “No. One scoop chocolate. One scoop cherry. Same cup.” So, my very first sale was an adventurous one. And his name was David Buckman, so from now on if anyone wants a cherry chocolate, it’s called a Cherry Buckman.

TOP What did your parents say when you told them you were gong to be making Italian ices? Do they still live in New York?

JP My parents both live in New York on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and my mom was one of the first calls I made. Yeah, I talked to my mother before I made ices because she’s a great cook. She’s a collector of Italian cookbooks. And she’s the one who really helped me out with the chocolate recipe. It’s from Great Grandma Polleti. An old family treasure.

Mmmm 

TOP You’ve done lots of other creative things like music and comedy and writing. What made you decide to become a professional Italian ice maker?

JP Well I just had a vision of myself eating one, and then I sort of played with that and visualized myself making it. And, to me, it’s not really separate from my other creative endeavors. It’s a real natural extension of what I already do. My hope is that the songs that I write taste good, that my melodies are sweet. I hope that my Italian ices can sing to you and have a kind of melody to them. I mean, whatever it is you and I and whoever create, it’s storytelling. My Italian ice is more than an Italian ice. It’s a tale of the Italian immigrants who came to New York on ships in the late 1900s. It’s the story of the New York experience. And if you get it from me, it’s the story of a Jewish kid who loved Italian culture.

TOP What was it about Italian ices that drew you to them, as opposed to a different creative endeavor?

JP I think it came from a conversation with my therapist. I was taking a break from comedy. My therapist asked me what I wanted out of life, and I said I wanted to bring different people joy and share my experiences. And he said, “Well, what makes you happy?” And I said, “Italian ice.” And I thought, that’s what I should be doing. I should be making chocolate Italian ice because the kids here don’t have it. That’s why Mix Masters has the slogan, “We are your Brooklyn Bridge.”

TOP What exactly is an Italian ice?

JP It’s the poor man’s gelato. Snow cones are trashy. I saw people making snow cones during the SXSW festival and it was shameless. This guy was scraping ice off a big block, and he had a big plastic gallon jug like the kind you have windshield wiper fluid in. The liquid inside the jug looked like windshield wiper fluid. And then he just poured it on top of the ice and handed it to somebody. It looked like radioactive garbage. I know I’ve been talking a lot of smack about snow cones, but I just think an iced dessert is so much better.

TOP So if a snow cone is radioactive garbage, then what is an Italian ice?

photo / Jerm Pollet  

JP Without the language of judgment, a snow cone is chopped ice and corn syrup. An Italian ice is fruit or chocolate blended up — it’s the natural ingredients and process that make Italian ice special. And it’s dairy free; it’s just air. Blue Bell is great ice cream not because they’re putting more cream in it, but because they’re putting more air in it.

TOP Oh, that wasn’t a joke? It’s really air?

JP It’s one of the best ingredients. And gelato has less air so it’s more dense. But gelato seems so exclusive to me. Maybe it’s the flavors, like amaretto. To me, I don’t want to get more exotic than coconut. I want the staples.

TOP Could you make an Italian ice out of anything?

JP Oh, sure. Name me something.

TOP Olives?

JP I could make you an olive Italian ice. That’d be easy.

TOP You’ve been writing music your whole life, so are you going to write the jingle for Mix Masters?

JP I’d probably get one of my hip-hop friends to do a rap. Rap music was born out New York as well. I’d hear it on the streets all the time when I was buying my Italian ice.

TOP If you knew you were going to grow up to make Italian ices, what do you think the little kid version of you would think of all this?

JP I’d be psyched.