Review: Haagen Dazs "Green Tea & Honey Vanilla" Ice Cream

As mentioned before, when my sister came over for Thanksgiving, we had initially intended to find a carton of Island Farms green tea flavour ice cream to review, but were unable to locate any (as we discovered a week and a half later, we had neglected to visit the one grocery store in town that carried it...review upcoming!). Even after my sister had gone home, J and I still had a desire to try something frozen and green tea, so we picked up a container of Haagen Dazs Green Tea & Honey Vanilla, which proclaimed itself to be "new".

We were a bit skeptical at first: both of us like green tea, especially J who is much more of a tea connoisseur and who has had a lot of green tea during her time in Japan. We weren't entirely sure how the vanilla and honey flavours were going to compliment the flavour of green tea. I like tea lattes and tea mistos as much as the next commercial coffee shop addict, but green tea was one I tended to stay away from because it can easily be botched (at least in my experience). Upon opening, we found a very pale green ice cream that was easily divided between the pair of us.

Like almost all Haagen Dazs ice creams, this one is simple and gets right to the point. In this case, however, it kind of gets to the point in reverse order.  By that we mean that the flavours dominate in the reverse order of how they are listed on the package. While vanilla is listed last, we found this to be the most dominant flavour, with the honey coming in to sweeten it nicely (although to be fair, this ice cream contains both sugar and honey and while J said she could taste the honey, all I could taste was "sweet" and nothing discernibly honey-like). In fact, if you hadn't told us what this ice cream was called, and if we ignored the colour, I think both of us would have called it a funny-tasting vanilla ice cream. The green tea is there. Kinda. If you're really looking for it, you can taste it, but otherwise it is mostly present as an aftertaste, or as a very subtle tea-like note at the end. Basically, this ice cream is vanilla infused with green tea, rather than being a straight-up green tea ice cream. So I guess, in a way, it's more complex than we originally thought?

Recommend to a friend? If you are expecting in-your-face green tea flavour, you will be disappointed. However, if you want to experience a light and non-threatening variation on green tea, you will probably enjoy this.
Repurchase? J: Maybe. It's a good ice cream, but it doesn't deliver the green tea taste I was hoping for. B: It wouldn't be first on my list, but I enjoyed this. Would repurchase if I was in the mood.