We Want These Fried-Chicken Ice-Cream Sandwiches In Our Mouths Right. Now.

Downlow and Mister have dreamed up the ultimate sweet-salty-spicy collab.

Sweet-and-salty food pairings are typically better known for their shock value than actual flavour profiles. (Deep-fried cheesecake bites? Doughnut burgers? No one asked for this!!) But when they work, they freaking work: the Red Wagon’s pulled-pork pancakes, Trader Joe’s yogurt-covered pretzels, a freshly fried McDonald’s French fry generously dipped in vanilla soft serve.

And though I’ve yet to try it, I’m ready to add Mister and Downlow Chicken Shack’s soon-to-be-released collab to this successful sweet-savoury list, judging from pics and descriptions alone. In short, the Yaletown ice-cream shop has teamed up with the Nashville-hot-chicken stop—and the winner of Best Casual in our most recent Restaurant Awards—to craft a pair of sweet-and-salty (and spicy!) ice-cream sandwiches: the Jalapeño Honey Ice Cream Sando and the Pineapple Ice Cream Sando.

Both look like your standard ice-cream sandwich in that there’s a huge brick of ice cream (in either Jalapeno Honey flavour, which is inspired by Downlow’s housemade sauce of the same name, or Pineapple flavour, which is finished with Downlow’s “hot dust”) sandwiched between two pieces of what Mister calls “cracker crust.” But the real star of this collab between two unlikely collab-ers is the third offering: the Jalapeño Honey Ice Cream Fried Chicken Skin Sando, which ditches the crackers for crispy pieces of deep-fried chicken skin, aka the best part of fried chicken by a mile (kilometre?) and half.

Which is to say, if the general public enjoys deep-fried things as much as I do (and I’m 99.9 percent sure that they do), these fried-chicken sandos won’t be around for long. In fact, they’re only available at Downlow (905 Commercial Dr.) this Saturday (July 13), at the sold-out Brewery and the Beast (July 28 at Concord Pacific Place) and at a date-to-be-determined ice-cream social at Mister (1141 Mainland St.). The regular Jalapeño Honey Ice Cream Sando (i.e., the one sans chicken skins) will be available at Downlow for the entire summer beginning Sunday (July 14). The Pineapple Ice Cream Sando will be available at both Downlow and Mister for the summer starting Sunday as well.

So make a day of it: kick off your morning with pulled-pork pancakes drenched in Jack Daniel’s maple syrup, grab a small fry and soft serve from the Golden Arches as a snack and then mosey down to Downlow for the ultimate sweet-salty-spicy indulgence: a block of cool ice cream crammed between two pieces of hot deep-fried chicken crisps. Actually, scratch that: you should probably make Downlow your first stop of the day. This is deep-fried chicken skins we’re talking about, people!!