TV Restaurants

What Happened to Big Gay Ice Cream Truck After Best Thing I Ever Ate?

Best Thing I Ever Ate, Season 5 New York, New York

Current status

Closed

As of October 2026, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck has closed — confirmed via Yelp, July 2026.

What the source shows: Yelp's July 2026 listing marks the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck permanently closed, and Wikipedia describes the parent company as defunct as of 2025. How we decide a status →

What happened after Best Thing I Ever Ate? 2 episodes

Part 1 — Season 5, Episode 12

"The Best Thing I Ever Ate" featured the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck for its inventive soft-serve creations, including the Salty Pimp: vanilla soft serve, dulce de leche, sea salt, and a dip in chocolate shell. Founders Doug Quint and Bryan Petroff launched the truck on June 13, 2009, at Brooklyn Pride, before expanding the brand into storefronts around New York City and, briefly, Philadelphia. According to Yelp, whose listing for the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck was updated in July 2026, the business is marked permanently closed. Wikipedia's entry for Big Gay Ice Cream separately describes the company as defunct as of 2025. Neither the truck nor the storefronts it inspired appear to still be operating under the Big Gay Ice Cream name.

Part 2 — All-Star, Episode 8

Best Thing I Ever Ate's 'Supreme Sweets' episode spotlighted Big Gay Ice Cream's soft-serve sundaes, including the Salty Pimp — vanilla soft serve layered with dulce de leche, a chocolate dip, and sea salt. The business began in 2009 as a food truck run by Douglas Quint and Bryan Petroff before the pair opened a brick-and-mortar shop at 61 Grove Street in Manhattan's West Village. Village Preservation reported on 2019-06-06 that both of the company's Manhattan storefronts, the Grove Street shop and an earlier East Village location, had closed. Yelp's business listing for the Grove Street address, last updated 2026-09, still shows the shop marked permanently closed, with no indication a replacement location opened at that address.

The episodes Best Thing I Ever Ate

Episode 12
Air date not confirmed
Title: Street Food · What was featured: Inventive soft-serve sundaes such as the Salty Pimp cone
All-Star, Episode 8
Air date not confirmed
Title: Supreme Sweets · What was featured: soft-serve sundaes like the Salty Pimp

Also in Season 5 Best Thing I Ever Ate

Season 5: 61 of 104 still open · 7 renamed, moved or under new owners

All 13 Season 5 episodes →

Nearest open restaurants By distance from 61 Grove Street

All 448 TV restaurants in New York →

Before you go: Businesses change fast. Always confirm directly with the restaurant — call ahead, or check its own current website or social media — before making plans around anything on this page.

Sources we checked 4 references

  1. Yelp https://www.yelp.com/biz/big-gay-ice-cream-truck-new-york
  2. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Gay_Ice_Cream
  3. Yelp https://www.yelp.com/biz/big-gay-ice-cream-shop-new-york-2
  4. villagepreservation.org https://villagepreservation.org/2019/06/06/business-of-the-month-big-gay-ice-cream-shop-125-east-7th-street-61-grove-street/
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Record btiea-0494 · checked by Cal Marchetti.