Moncton Chef Wants To Fill The Gourmet Ice Cream Niche
MONCTON – “I used to spend time reading a lot of cookbooks. Now I read a lot of ice cream books,” said Jon Morrison, one of Moncton’s top culinary talent who also sells artisanal ice cream through his business Lost and Found.
With his business, Morrison wants to make ice cream that’s “perfectly seasoned,” he said. That too with as many local products as possible. And except for products containing jams that may need cornstarch or pectin, they’re all-natural.
“There’s no ice cream stabilizer. It’s all-natural ingredients and just proper cooking techniques. Everything’s made from scratch.”
Morrison is currently Chef de Cuisine at Clos, a casual fine-dining restaurant in downtown Moncton. His experience takes from places like Raymonds and Seto Kitchen + Bar in St. John’s, Little Louis in Moncton and Origines in Caraquet, among others.
It was at Origines that he came across an ice cream machine and began offering various flavours to customers each week.
“I would make ice cream every week, and people started coming in and asking if they can buy tubs of ice cream,” he said.
He decided to get himself a small ice cream machine and test the market with a side gig. When he settled in Moncton for the Clos job, he launched his ice cream line. His partner Anni Leblanc, a nurse in northern Ontario, helps him with marketing and social media when she’s home.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, Morrison offered three tubs for $25 for delivery within Greater Moncton.
“That gave me the opportunity to work on getting the clientele and customers because everybody’s at home. I’m able to drop off the ice cream, and they’re looking forward to it every week,” he said.
Morrison has various seasonal and limited flavours like melon ginger sherbet, miso sesame, strawberry peach, molasses, curry banana white chocolate, and recently, poached pear sherbet “because I got a bunch of peas from [local restaurant] Notre Dame de Parkton,” he said.
“Just trying to have fun, and the things that sell really well and people really enjoy we’ll continue to do them next year, but right now it’s kind of like an experiment, see what people like, what people don’t like,” he said. “I think we can be a little bit more innovative.”
He gets that not everybody will like the experimental flavours, so he now has five staple flavours: chocolate sorbet, peanut butter and jam sorbet, salted vanilla, tiramisu, and ‘the movies.’
There’s no storefront for Lost and Found Ice Cream though. They’re sold in tubs through local retailers like Sequioa Downtown Moncton and Dieppe and Stirling’s Farm Market.
Over the summer, smaller tubs were also sold through Euston Park Beer Garden, and by the scoop at a pop-up event at Tire Shack Brewing Co. Morrison’s ice cream can also be found in the affogato course of Epoch Chemistry’s coffee tasting experience, or as dessert offering at Clos from time to time.
“Because ice cream is so seasonal, the plan is to eventually open up a pop-up scoop shop, just because that way I can do seasonal flavors and have a limited quantity, and sell scoops,” Morrison said, adding that the pop-up event at Tire Shack worked “very well.”
“It would be fantastic to have it five days a week or seven days a week for the summer,” he said.
As the weather cools, he hopes to get Lost and Found Ice Cream into more stores in Moncton’s north end, and prepare for next summer’s pop up scoop shop.
He’s targeting the same kind of people who would come to the fine-dining restaurants he’s worked at with his ice cream business. He’s still doing this part-time but hopes to hire someone to make ice cream with him eventually.
“I think there’s a possibility for growing that market.”