Krisch's Restaurant & Ice Cream Parlour in Massapequa serves ketchup-mayo ice cream

People tend to fall into two camps when it comes to garnishing their fries: Traditionalists who squirt it with ketchup, and calorie cowboys who reach for mayonnaise. For those who fall somewhere in between, there’s ketchup-and-mayonnaise … ice cream? Yes, at least until it runs out.

Just before Memorial Day weekend, Krisch’s Restaurant & Ice Cream Parlour in Massapequa added Heinz Tomato Ketchup and Hellmann’s Mayonnaise to an ice-cream base for a 20-gallon batch of the pale pink dessert, which is speckled with bits of tomato. However, the staff won’t serve it in a cone or sundae, as with their other 30 flavors: Instead, they scoop it on top of a plate of salty, crispy fries, drizzle it with more ketchup, and then sprinkle over some Himalayan sea salt. The result costs $9.99, and the heat from the fries slowly melts the ice cream into a silky sauce that messes with your sense of hot and cold, salty and sweet, right and wrong — but is, as they say, much better than it sounds.

“You can’t eat it with a cone or spoon,” said Krisch’s owner, Steve McCue, who saw the flavor on Instagram and recreated it in his shop. (Ketchup-and-mayo ice cream dates to at least 2016, when it was featured at a now-closed Filipino ice cream shop called Freezer Burn.) “You gotta eat it on fries.”

Someone should have told that to Ron Claiborne of "Good Morning America," who tucked into some of the flavor on its own, with a spoon, last Sunday. He didn’t seem terribly impressed. And workers at Krisch’s admitted it’s been a hard sell to customers, too. But know this: When the hot, salty fries meet the cold, sweet ice cream, both become greater than the sum of their parts.

Krisch’s Restaurant & Ice Cream Parlour, 11 Central Ave., Massapequa. 516-797-3149.