NOM, NOM, NOM

Call it a one-two punch of the most caloric and orgiastic kind. Call it a sentimental journey back to the best, most wonderfully elusive stoned teen years in Pittsburgh. Call it the grease and sugar-lined underbelly of the often-times falsely accused vegan-adjacent Southern California culinary dreamscape. Call it the corner where the sacred and profane meet and have a feast of unspeakable visions.

But whatever you choose to call it, a few key things about this culinary diptych on the northeast corner of Silver Lake's Sunset Junction remain undeniable and even more...unforgettable.

For starters, the Win-Dow is one of the best smash burgers in L.A. By the time you are steamrolling your way onto your second bite of a Win-Dow Double you are multi-molar-deep on a carb-lusty voyage imbued with a sassy and blissful tint largely due to its ability to tiptoe along that oh-so crucial dotted line between muck and an exquisite jumble of savory gooeyness. In short, a sizzling molten mulch of potato bun, seared ground beef, slurpy cheese, and sultry grilled onions.

That being said, the fries are just okay. Respectable enough to ride shotgun as an accent, but in terms of stepping up to any sort of leading role, they simply do not pack enough of a wallop to ride solo at your next city picnic. Shoestring style and a little too limp and maybe even lifeless from languishing under the lamp a touch or so too long.

But hey, maybe youʼll have better luck when you lock and load.

Now comes the part on this maiden voyage in HiiiLand where things get tricky. And maybe even a little sticky. At The Win-Dow, another menu apex that I'd even label “transcendent” is the hand-dipped salted caramel soft-serve cone. In fact, I might even dare to categorize it as a “peak experience”—five minutes of your life where you are cut loose from the noose, freed from the bondage of self, immune to the judgement of others and that slow, steady headlock of debt. Crunching through that hard sugar-cast shell and motoring on into the soft inner core triggers an unparalleled burst of what feels very much like…winning. Whatever that all is, and however it vaults you into yes-ness, it is nothing we can linger on too long just now because the second half of this diet-negating pilgrimage requires ten steps east to Mashti Malone’s.

Hurtling headlong into its fifth decade on the heels of its inventor, Mashti Sirvani, the place owes a great deal of its early adopter artisanal ice cream adored by fanboys and girls to its Persian roots. Now I know these days it might not seem like that big of a deal to toss rose water and saffron or pistachio into the mélange, but hop in your Delorean and blast back to the early 80s when a flavor like “Rocky Road” was considered cutting-edge and youʼll start to get an inkling of exactly how NASA-adjacent those funk-forward ingredients are. That said, and despite having darkened the doorway of MM many times over the decades, I kept it mucho simple and went Cookies & Cream.

Why? Because, frankly, it just looked so damn sexy! Epic ice cream manages the nearly impossible tightrope shimmy of being insanely rich and deep, truly satisfying in the deepest pockets of oneʼs psyche, while somehow still managing to not be too grainy-sugar candy-trite. The dream lives in the cream. And with that, I will leave you to ponder for yourself what I feel has really become the most essential question in the current ice cream wars: Has the onus of a “plethora of options” poked and prodded us to unconsciously abandon the classics?

Until next time, Ciao.

Arty Nelson has written for GQ, Interview, LA Weekly, BIKINI, Black Book, Ray Gun and The LA Times. He owns the One Trick Pony Art Gallery on Western.

Mashti bought an existing ice cream shop almost 40 years ago called Mugsy Malone’s and in an effort to save money on the sign, he simply changed “Mugsy” to “Mashti.”