Nick Morgenstern testing different flavor profiles for the Salted Pretzel base

Despite the old-fashioned charms of its Delft-blue paint job, the inspiration for Nicholas Morgenstern’s new ice cream parlor on the Lower East Side — where the whipped cream for $13 salted caramel pretzel sundaes is made à la minute — isn’t rooted in nostalgia.

At a time when many ice cream makers in New York are eagerly exploring newfangled riffs on old-fashioned toppings or building a rigorous crop-to-cone supply chain, Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream is offering something slightly different: a scoop of the experimental spirit — equal parts innovation and pursuit of technical perfection — that is already de rigueur in other parts of the culinary world. Just six weeks old, the Rivington Street shop has drawn doting attention from local bloggers and other food obsessives, not to mention ordinary ice cream eaters.