OUTSIDE HEIDI’S ICE CREAM SHOP, in Albuquerque, a line eagerly waits for a glimpse at the glass case filled with brown butter piñon, lavender lemon sorbet, Adobe Road (chocolate spiked with red chile marshmallow and candied pecans), and other enticing flavors. Opened last year, the shop sits behind a tiny fenced-in garden that’s part of Heidi’s Jam Factory.
“I’m a big lover of ice cream,” says Dimitri Eleftheriou, the 36-year-old son of Heidi’s Raspberry Farm founder Heidi Eleftheriou. So in just a short time, the former restaurant chef and his team have created more than 40 flavors. “I really wanted to create something that was kind of my own,” he says.
Eleftheriou grew up in Corrales, where his mom started her jam-making enterprise with raspberries from the family farm. He helped her sell Heidi’s Raspberry Jam at the Corrales and Santa Fe farmers’ markets before studying culinary arts at Le Cordon Bleu in San Francisco. An apprenticeship at the legendary Chez Panisse eventually led him to work in restaurants in the Bay Area for 10 years. New Mexico finally called him home in 2016.
A cone holds matcha mint chip, Adobe Road, Earl Grey, and strawberry.
Photograph courtesy of Nate Wahlroos.
“I came back home to help my mother,” he says. She had recently purchased the jam factory building, and the company was expanding. “I still wanted to work with food but in a nonrestaurant capacity,” he adds.
Now, as his mother takes steps toward retirement, Eleftheriou is putting his stamp on Heidi’s empire. He takes a chef-driven approach to the ice cream shop’s flavors and treats, experimenting with unusual pairings like beet and ginger and foraging spruce tips with his fiancée, Celestina Mancha, in the Sandía Mountains for a flavor last year.
Naturally, fruit is an ingredient in some of Eleftheriou’s ice cream flavors, such as raspberry and apricot chamomile. He’s cooked up fun add-ons, too, like ice cream flights of four flavors and the Triple Coffee Float—cold brew coffee poured over coffee ice cream and topped with an espresso crema. Pop-ups are occasionally on the menu, pairing Greek cuisine and other styles of food from local chefs with Heidi’s Ice Cream.
Raspberry sorbet gets topped with Heidi’s raspberry jam and raspberry meringue.
Photograph courtesy of Nate Wahlroos.
In addition to opening the ice cream shop, he recently launched Heidi’s Edibles, a separate line of THC-infused jam and gummies, called “jammies,” available at licensed dispensaries in New Mexico.
“I’ve always been very passionate about cannabis,” he says. “I feel like there’s a gap in the market for high-quality edibles made without high-fructose corn syrup and food coloring.”
More plans are on the horizon as well, including the potential for expansion. “When I hear all the positive feedback from our customers,” Eleftheriou says, “it really makes me think that we need to offer more locations.” Just don’t try to pin him down on a favorite flavor. “We don’t have a best ice cream,” he says. “They’re all incredible.”
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