An Ice Cream Shop, With Flavors Like Toasted Rice, Is Opening in the East Village

It began with Hannah Bae figuring out how to distill the flavors of crunchy rice at the bottom of the pan, a favorite from her childhood, into toasted rice ice cream. Over time, she developed a repertoire of Asian American flavors like black sesame, Thai tea, red bean, pandan, and taro. She’s always innovating: One day it's mochi cookies and cream, the next, gochujang caramel cookie dough and makgeolli.

Noona’s — a reference to the Korean word for older sister — sells at specialty grocers around the city and beyond. But this week, Bae announced that she will open her first ice cream shop in the East Village, at 304 E. Fifth Street, near Second Avenue, in August.

The shop will be tiny, around 300 square feet, with a few counter stools. Here, she’ll finally be able to serve by the scoop, including an expanded list of flavors she has always wanted to produce, like mango sticky rice and strawberry yuzu creamsicle. More than that, it’s a chance to house all of her passions under one roof. There will be sundaes and ice cream sandwiches; she’s also working on expanding her cake offerings.

It’s a backward trajectory compared to other ice cream brands: Shop first, then national wholesale packaged distribution — the way that mega brands like Van Leeuwen have done it. But Bae isn’t measuring her success against anyone’s but her own and it’s armed her with a unique vantage point on the ice cream space.

“When you don’t have investors like so many other brands, it really changes the way you look at things, your values,” says the Korean American entrepreneur who was raised in Woodhaven, Queens.

Noona’s

Bae’s entry point into the sweets business wasn’t traditional, never having gone to pastry school, but baking has always been a passion. She has fond memories of her dad, an immigrant to Queens by way of Korea, bringing home a boxed cake mix that she played around with, and generally being fascinated with how sweet American desserts tended to be.

She kept churning on things from there, figuring out how to get the essence of flavors she was craving but having trouble finding in the frozen aisle, encouraged by friends to take her hobby into something bigger. One of her first clients was shops like Greene Grape in Fort Greene and Mekelburg’s in Clinton Hill. She figured out how to prioritize sustainability and ethical sourcing without sacrificing taste. She places emphasis on whole ingredients, beyond just flavoring.

Her ice creams have been boosted by New York City restaurants, too. Hooni Kim’s restaurant Danji featured her ice cream on the menu, and while the restaurant is temporarily closed, it’s also sold at his sibling pantry shop Little Banchan Shop in Long Island City.

At some point, she hit a hallmark many Asian American consumer package goods dream of: She got into H Mart.

In her early days, she prepared ice cream out of Hot Bread Kitchen as part of their incubator program. Later, she worked in the off-hours of a Carroll Gardens ice cream shop. More recently, she’s been producing out of a licensed dairy plant in the Bronx.

Now with the ice cream bakeshop, she can return to her “first love” baking, and give it more attention. Part of that means at the East Village headquarters she’s working on paring back her wholesale accounts to focus on building out the full vision of what Noona’s can become.

Consumer patterns have come a long way since she first debuted her brand, when, she says, it was once hard to find Asian American ice cream flavors beyond an Asian grocer. Since first launching eight years ago, it’s been encouraging to see the way the entire ice cream category has transformed and become more inclusive, she says.

Ahead of the store launch, Bae has rebranded: “To me, the Noona’s new look will be more true to who I am, where I wanna go, what Noona’s has endured and has become.”

She’s also launched a GoFundMe, with a target of $85,000 to help with build-out costs, new equipment and building out a team.