How Soso’s Makes Its Towering Guinness-Spiked Ice Cream Sundae

Guinness figures onto food menus in dishes like beef stew and beer-battered fish. But Soso’s, a cocktail bar and restaurant in Manhattan’s SoHo, hoists the stout to new peaks with its mountainous Guinness Sundae.

The dish has been on Soso’s dessert menu since it opened in October 2024. Chef de cuisine Luka Coyne brought the Guinness Sundae — a heap of chocolate ganache, Guinness ice cream, Guinness caramel, and malt foam, all topped with more of the caramel — to the restaurant’s first R&D tasting. After everyone tried it, he says, he received no notes.

“Man, I love drinking Guinness,” says Coyne, whose favorite Guinness in New York City is at The Dead Rabbit. “That was the end-all, be-all of that dish.” Now, videos and photo carousels of influencers digging into the piled-high, brown and white dessert are populating social media feeds.

Much of the Guinness flavor in the sundae comes down to a simple reduction of Guinness that serves to minimize its volume and, more importantly, concentrate its flavor. The ice cream begins as a crème anglaise — the standard base of milk, egg yolks, and sugar. The kitchen crew then folds reduced Guinness into that before churning the mixture.

For the caramel, Coyne combines a full case of Guinness with brown sugar and cooks the combo until it has reduced to the desired consistency. The caramel could finish there, he says, but a touch of butter brings a glossiness to the final look.

The back-of-house staff also prepares a 70 percent chocolate ganache before each night’s service. Lastly, the crew whips up a malt foam from egg yolks, cream, sugar, and malt powder that gets aerated to harken back to the thick head that crowns a perfect pint of Guinness.

Then, when a ticket for a Guinness Sundae comes in, the layering begins. At the bottom of each sundae glass is a coating of the chocolate ganache, followed by a layer of the caramel. Then comes a “nice, very healthy scoop” of Guinness ice cream decorated with a spiral of the malt foam. A ceramic pot on the side is filled with extra Guinness caramel, and then the dish is ready to walk. At each table, a server dresses the mound one final time with the caramel.

Beverage director Josh Gibson attributes much of the Guinness Sundae’s social media virality to that finishing touch. On a busy night, he estimates, the restaurant will sell around 20 to 30 sundaes. “It’s definitely our most popular dessert,” Gibson says. “It is very showy with the tableside presentation of the caramel drizzled over the top.”

Coyne, an Australian expat, wanted the Soso’s food menu to nod to NYC, its wow factor, and its eccentricities. He also noticed to what extent Americans go crazy for sundaes. “We’re just trying to keep it fun,” Coyne admits. “We’re trying to keep it a little bit kitsch, a little bit tongue-in-cheek.”

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