Natural and nuanced with some punch and extra oomph
I’m not as terrified about the prospect of being driven into despair and joblessness by artificial intelligence as most journalists, but I’m also not anticipating the day when AI bots start handling all restaurant reviews. I know I sound like an old luddite saying this, but a computer could never really describe comfort food, since it never spent 15 years eating the same slice of pizza from a favorite corner spot to the point where it yearns for that romanticized experience.
And certainly there is no algorithm that gets goosebumps over lemon ices—even the best ones on earth, available at the Lemon Ice King of Corona in New York. You may have only heard about it or spotted the awning on the intro to the King of Queens, but it’s a real place and I grew up with my tongue attached to their frozen delights. And now, these Håvn gummies, natural treasures that they are, returned me to the source of so much happiness.
Less-sweet citruses are challenging to replicate; as anyone who’s ever swapped out a fresh squeeze for a bottle of store-bought ReaLemon can confirm, even juice that comes from a pure concentrate doesn’t exactly taste like itself that far removed from the branch. Which is why we turn to exemplar extraction experts like his excellence in Queens and the heroes at Håvn Extracts in Oxford, Mass. Like the liquid from a yellow gland grenade picked off a tree and dashed with pure cane sugar at a county fair, the latter’s Håvn gummies start off sweet, then pull you toward a pucker before flooding your face with the full flavor and finishing faintly.
They’re also infused with full-spectrum oil and, for the sativa lemon ones melting on my tongue, match every 5 mgs of THC with that much CBG per tender bite. It’s the kind of winning formula that makes for a resulting entourage effect seemingly different, even potentially stronger than what is implied by the THC content alone—all on the strength of cleverly leveraging lesser-known unregulated cannabinoid cousins.
People who read my reviews know I will happily enjoy some artificial garbage as long as it kicks and has a cool concept and packaging. But that doesn’t diminish my appreciation for sophisticated yet structurally simple gems like these, which are handmade with real fruit and natural ingredients plus taste and feel like you can spread them on your breakfast toast.
As is the case with my childhood pizza shop, and the Lemon Ice King of Corona, I’ll be coming back for more—next time for the blackberry (indica with CBN and THC), then for the strawberry (hybrid with CBD and THC), then back to my comfort zone for more sweet lemon squares.
