Photographed by Danielle Atkins
Growing up in the suburbs of Nashville, Colby Rasavong didn’t dream of French cuisine—the foundation for the restaurants where he cut his teeth—or the elevated, Appalachian-inspired food he would later cook with chef Sean Brock. He also didn’t eat much American food until his teens, an easy thing to do when living in one of the largest Lao communities in the US. Instead of typical Southern fare like barbecue or mac and cheese, Rasavong’s childhood favorites were laab, sticky rice with chicken, and thin-sliced brisket seared over a charcoal grill.
“Growing up, my family didn’t go out much. It wasn’t a common thing for us,” Rasavong says. “We hung out with families from our temple and ate the best Lao food we could with the ingredients we could find in Middle Tennessee. I didn’t have American food until I was in my teens and started hanging out with people who didn’t look like me,” he says with a laugh. Those years of eating within his Lao community and only later absorbing the broader landscape around him have come to define his cooking.
Rasavong spent time in Charleston and Nashville cooking alongside Brock at his fine dining restaurants. Later in his career, Rasavong ran into sommelier Alex Burchett, and the idea for a wine bar and restaurant was born. While the restaurant, Bad Idea, was under construction, Rasavong took up a residency in New York so he could keep cooking and learning. There, he found a surprising lack of Lao restaurants, which led him back to his roots. “It pushed me to think about the food I truly wanted to serve,” Rasavong says. “It was about being homesick, missing my family and the food I grew up eating.”
“I wanted to cook Lao food again, but I didn’t want to lose the 20 years of my career I had spent learning French food and techniques—so I decided to put it all together.” He began to apply his French training to Lao dishes, finding his voice at Bad Idea, which gave Nashville a new way to experience Lao flavors—plus a dessert that was decidedly not vanilla.
The idea for the dish originated on a trip to Southeast Asia, where ice cream functions differently than in the West: less sweet, more savory, and often incorporating funky or fermented flavors. Cheese ice cream in particular made an impression. “Over there, all the ice cream leans toward the savory side,” Rasavong says. “And the cheese ice creams are all made from processed cheese.”
Rasavong originally envisioned a rotating ice cream bar at Bad Idea, but production realities and a tight kitchen quickly limited their options. “We just zoned in on cheese ice cream,” he says. And if you’re going to make ice cream with processed cheese in America, there’s only one choice: Velveeta.
Technically, Velveeta is not cheese—the Food and Drug Administration classifies it as a “pasteurized prepared cheese product”—which puts it in a strange corner of American food culture. Melting a waxy chunk of Velveeta into a can of Ro-Tel is a classic tailgate dish. And yet its wonky texture and the additives that create it are the things that make it work in ice cream. “It actually has great hydrocolloids,” Rasavong says. “It’s already prehydrated, so you can add a little bit to something and get all the amazing textures in that dish.” Basically, Velveeta is prefabricated molecular gastronomy—all the qualities of the fancy emulsifiers that high-end kitchens engineer from scratch are already built in, shelf-stable, and ready to go. It’s one instance in which processed food comes out on top.
The recipe is uncomplicated: Velveeta and cream cheese form the base, providing density and an elastic, yielding body. White chocolate adds sweetness, and milk thins the mixture enough to spin in a machine. Rasavong serves it with persimmon whipped cream and a yuzu granita, using the acid to balance the richness of the dairy.
The presentation gives nothing away. If no one told you what you were about to eat, you’d have little warning of what lay beneath the granules of granita and whipped cream swirls. “It looks like one thing, hopefully something familiar, but then it catches you off guard,” Rasavong says. “You’re like, oh, beautiful granita … and then you’re like, sh*t, that’s Velveeta. Either you love it or you hate it.”
Rasavong has since moved on from Bad Idea and is working on new projects and pop-ups, with the dream of opening a restaurant that combines his background with a casual dining approach. The ice cream will surface again somewhere, poised to surprise and possibly delight future diners. “I’m not rushing this anymore,” he says. “I really want to get this right. I want the restaurant to feel right.”
Velveeta Ice Cream With Persimmon Whipped Cream and Yuzu Granita
Ingredients
- Velveeta Ice Cream
- 1¼ cups whole milk
- 1 cup white chocolate
- ¾ cup whole greek yogurt
- ¾ cup cream cheese
- 1⅛ cup Velveeta
- Persimmon Whipped Cream
- 1 tablespoon powdered gelatin
- 4 cups heavy cream
- ¾ cup powdered sugar
- 1¼ cup persimmon puree
- Yuzu Granita
- 3 cups yuzu juice
- ⅔ cup cane sugar
Instructions
- Velveeta Ice Cream
- Warm milk in a medium pot on medium heat. While the milk is warming, place the rest of the ingredients into a large bowl.
- Once the milk begins to simmer, pour it over the ingredients in the bowl and set aside for 10–15 minutes, or until the ingredients have softened.
- Puree with an immersion blender until completely smooth. Store in the freezer in an airtight container.
- Persimmon Whipped Cream
- Add powdered gelatin and ¼ cup cold water to a medium heatproof bowl and set aside until fully bloomed, about 5–10 minutes.
- Warm ¼ cup of the heavy cream in a small saucepan and pour over the gelatin mixture.
- Combine the cream and gelatin mixture with powdered sugar and persimmon puree in a stand mixer, and whisk to medium stiff peaks.
- Set aside for at least 4 hours before storing in the refrigerator.
- Yuzu Granita
- Blend the yuzu juice, sugar, and 1½ cups water together and strain onto a sheet pan. Freeze overnight.
- To Serve
- Scoop ice cream into bowls and top with the persimmon whipped cream and shaved yuzu granita.
