Koma Cafe’s Soft Serve Steals the Show in Takoma Park - Eater DC

Blueberry caramel with gochujang swirled with churro. Black pepper-blasted black cherry. Pistachio tahini swirled with an apricot labneh. Strawberry sumac. Blueberry garam masala. Biscoff cheesecake. Cardamom coffee. Vegan brown sugar fig. The soft serve machine at Koma Cafe in Takoma Park dispenses anything but just plain vanilla and chocolate (8006 Flower Avenue, Takoma Park, Maryland).

Soft serve became one of the stars at the sleek Italian cafe by a happy accident. Chef Brad Feickert, one of the partners in Koma along with Jared Mack and Marc Pickering, purchased the soft serve ice cream machine four years ago for his own Soko Butcher, a sustainable deli and butcher shop in the same neighborhood, but never had enough room to set it up.

When Koma opened in October 2023, Feickert and his partners made sure that the counter space in the 1,300-square-foot cafe was specifically designed to house the unwieldy machine.

Then came a new Koma manager, Pete Niederer, who coincidentally had a background in soft serve and frozen custard. Niederer had worked at Carmen’s Italian Ice in Rockville for more than 20 years, rising to the head manager of their main location and prime ice cream flavor developer. Feickert told him about the soft serve machine and asked him if he could get it working.

“That I can do,” Niederer recalled telling him. “When I came here they didn’t even know I had that background.”

He started with some “basic” flavors like salted caramel and caramel coffee. “Then we slowly realized that Takoma Park is a great environment to just have funky flavors because they like their unique things,” says Niederer. “So we started pushing it a little bit. I started doing all the things that I wanted to do at my old job but couldn’t.”

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All the soft serve ice creams Niederer creates are made with all natural dyes and flavors. He develops the flavors on his own by building a syrup, reducing it down in the kitchen, and adding it to the base. Every Tuesday new flavors are rotated in for the week. He stays late Monday night taking apart the machine, making up the flavors, setting it all up so it’s ready to go with a push of a button on Tuesday morning.

“A lot of development happens on Monday,” he says.

While he often plans his flavors out in advance, sometimes he just gets inspired by what he sees in the kitchen. His strawberry sumac grew from just wanting to make a strawberry flavor and then seeing the sumac spice that he could use to enhance the strawberry. An idea for a blueberry balsamic flavor morphed into something more elaborate when he started to talk to someone about gochujang cookies. He settled on a creamy creation with both blueberry caramel and the Korean fermented chile paste.

More than just creating the flavors themselves, he also considers how the swirl combinations of the two flavors coming out of the machine will taste together.

“When I did the pistachio tahini swirled with apricot labneh, they are both great separate but the plan was almost to do a Turkish delight where you have that deep heaviness of the pistachio and tahini but then that cuts nicely with the brightness of the apricot labneh yogurt,” he says. “They balance each other out.”

Word of Koma’s inventive flavors quickly spread over the past few months, bringing in a steady stream of visitors eager to see what the machine will churn out next. After his blueberry gochujang creation, Niederer said he might experiment with a banana turmeric. Vegan options are available the first and third week of the month and Niederer aims for them to be just as decadent as dairy options.

“A lot of places that make vegan food don’t treat it as a treat and they make a low-fat vegan [soft serve],” he says. “You’re vegan, you still want a dessert!”

Because everything has to fit through the machine, he said he has to make sure the flavors are on point without relying on extras.

“One thing about soft serve is you are limited in texture so nailing your flavors is really important,” he says.

While some customers might come in for Koma’s freshly made pizzas, pastas, cocktails, or just a hot cappuccino, they are often tempted to try the soft serve too.

“We are big on sampling because it’s hard to say no to ice cream once you get a bite,” says Niederer. “Don’t sleep on the twist because it’s not an afterthought.”

Koma operates from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

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