Wednesday, May 23, 2012
By Meredith Goad mgoad@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer
Maybe people feel like they need a little pick-me-up to take their minds off the economy.
Customers at the window of an ice cream stand – in this case, Garside's in Saco – are a summer tradition. What's new are the flavors available at Maine shops, including salt caramel, Thai chili and coconut.
Photos by Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
Ash Moore, 4, of Gray enjoys an ice cream cone at Garside's in Saco. Maine ice cream sellers report brisk sales this summer of everything from soft serve to gelato.
WHERE READERS LIKE TO INDULGE
WE ASKED readers to name their favorite spots to grab an ice cream on a hot summer day in southern Maine. This is by no means a complete list, so don't get upset if you don't see yours here. Think of it as a guide to new places to try.
AGGIE'S
106 Agamenticus Road, South Berwick
384-5016
Hours: Noon to 9 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturdays
Number of flavors: More than 100
Customer favorite: Anything with Maine in the name
Fun flavor: Play Dough -- bright-yellow ice cream with pieces of red and blue sugar cookie dough
Fun fact: If the shop doesn't have the flavor you want, the owner will make it for you.
Price of single scoop: $1.45
BEALS ICE CREAM
18 Veranda St., Portland
828-1253
Hours: Noon to 10 p.m. daily
Number of flavors: 45 in store; 80 total
Customer favorite: Coconut almond bar ice cream, black raspberry chocolate chip yogurt
Fun flavor: Teaberry (like the gum)
Fun fact: Many customers carry take-out cartons because Beals is located next door to the Veranda Noodle Bar.
Price of single scoop: $3 hard serve; $2 soft serve
BIG DADDY'S NORTH
22 Hollis Road, Hollis Center
929-3200
Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
How many flavors: 34
Customer favorite: Coffee Heath Bar
Fun flavor: Red raspberry chip
Price of single scoop: $1.75
BROWN'S OLD FASHIONED ICE CREAM
232 Nubble Road, York
363-1277
Hours: Noon to 9:30 p.m. daily
Number of flavors: 40 to 50
Customer favorite: The Tornado -- vanilla ice cream with M&Ms and Toll House, Oreo cookie and Heath Bar bits
Fun flavor: Orange pineapple
Fun fact: On the way to Nubble Light, with views of the Isles of Shoals
Price of single scoop: $3.25
GARSIDE'S ICE CREAM
295 Ferry Road, Saco
283-0045
Hours: Noon to 10 p.m. daily
How many flavors: 35, plus special flavors throughout the summer
Customer favorite: Strawberry cheesecake
Fun flavor: Fluff (tastes like a fluffernutter)
Fun fact: The shop has been around since 1950.
Price of single scoop: $2.94
THE GELATO FIASCO
74 Maine St., Brunswick
607-4002
Hours: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily
Number of flavors: 30 in the store, 500 total
Customer favorite: Dark chocolate sorbetto and Maine wild blueberry
Fun flavor: Blue cheese pear sorbetto
Fun fact: Lemon ginger sorbetto will be the 500th flavor.
Price of single scoop: $3.50
HODGMAN'S FROZEN CUSTARD
1108 Lewiston Road, New Gloucester
926-3553
Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday
Number of flavors: Vanilla, chocolate and a third flavor that rotates
Customer favorite: Hodgman's doesn't answer the phone -- there's only a recording that recites the hours and current flavors -- so this will have to remain a mystery.
Fun flavor: Triberry is the newest flavor, according to the recording.
Fun fact: This family-run shop was founded in 1946.
Price of single scoop: We had to drive all the way out there to find out that one scoop costs $2. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.
KETTLE COVE ICE CREAM
2 Bowery Beach Road, Cape Elizabeth
799-3533
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
Customer favorite: Blueberry pie
Fun flavor: Needham, based on the Maine potato candy. It includes coconut, chocolate chips and potato shavings.
Fun fact: This spring, the shop created a limited-time rhubarb-strawberry sorbet with a member of the Cape Farm Alliance. It was such a hit, it will be back next year.
Price of single scoop: $3.25
LIB'S DAIRY TREATS
32 Auburn St., Portland
797-4133
Hours: Noon to 9 p.m. daily
Number of flavors: Eight, soft serve only
Customer favorite: Peanut butter
Fun flavor: Lib's has lots of flavored dips to choose from for your cone. Chocolate, buttersctoch, cherry and raspberry dips are always available, but they also occasionally have cotton candy, blue raspberry, toasted coconut, bubblegum, lemon lime, peppermint and caramel.
Fun fact: The shop can make a bird face on your cone with candy eyes and a beak.
Price of single scoop (or, in this case, a small): $1.87
MAINELY CUSTARD
150 Route 1, Freeport
865-4417
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Number of flavors: Chocolate and vanilla, plus a flavor of the day that rotates among 45 flavors.
Customer favorite: Coconut
Fun flavor: German chocolate
Price of single scoop: Small custard $2.50, small soft serve $2.30
MAPLE'S
14 Gary Maietta Parkway, South Portland
899-3342
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Number of flavors: 24 in the store, 100 total
Customer favorite: Sea salt caramel-almond
Fun flavor: Peanut butter and jelly
Fun fact: The shop is named after the owner's dog.
Price of single scoop: $2.50 (kiddie), small (two scoops) is $3.50
MOUNT DESERT ISLAND ICE CREAM
51 Exchange St., Portland
210-3432
Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Open until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Customer favorites: Salt Caramel
Fun flavors: Bucket of Truth -- chocolate and caramel swirl with pecans from South Carolina -- and the Dude, a White Russian flavor for fans of "The Big Lebowski"
Fun fact: President Obama enjoyed a scoop of coconut ice cream at the Mount Desert Island shop in Bar Harbor last week.
Price of single scoop: $3.75
OTHERS! GELATO
15 Monument Square, Portland
874-7411
Hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday
Number of flavors: 20 in store, total of 35 to 40
Customer favorite: Nutella gelato; Berries Gone Wild sorbetto made with raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and strawberries
Fun flavor: Pink lemonade sorbetto
Fun fact: All take-out containers are either compostable or recyclable.
Price of single scoop: $2.95 single
PARK SIDE ICE CREAM
28 Main St., Cornish
625-8998
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
Number of flavors: 34
Customer favorite: Raspberry chocolate chip
Fun flavor: Peanut Butter Fantasy
Price of single scoop: $2.39
SUPER SCOOPS
178 Route 1, Falmouth
781-2694
Hours: Noon to 9:30 p.m. daily
Number of flavors: 55
Customer favorite: Coffee Heath Bar
Fun flavor: Peanut butter caramel cookie dough or coconut
Price of single scoop: $2.19
WILLARD SCOOPS
429 Preble St., South Portland
No phone
Hours: 1 to 9 p.m. Monday to Thursday; noon to 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; noon to 9 p.m. Sunday
Number of flavors: 25 in store, 35 total
Customer favorite: Salt caramel
Fun flavor: Key lime pie
Fun fact: In a couple of weeks, the store will be introducing a new flavor: Strawberry habenero.
Price of single scoop: $3.25
Or maybe we can blame it on last year's lousy weather. Can there be pent-up demand for ice cream?
Who knows why, but suddenly ice cream is everywhere. Hard serve and those old favorites, soft serve and frozen custard, are competing with their uptown cousin gelato for space in coffee shops, restaurants, dairy shacks and storefronts all over southern Maine.
And Mainers are eating it up.
"This has been our best summer ever in five years," observed Brad McCurtain of Others! Coffee, which serves 20 flavors of housemade gelato at its store in Monument Square.
As you are reading this, a gelato maker from Milano, Italy, is headed across the sea to Portland to open a new shop called Gorgeous Gelato.
According to an e-mail from Donato Giovine, he and his wife, Mariagrazia Zanardi, and their two children are moving here to open a shop at 434 Fore St., where they will make and sell "an authentic, Italian, organic gelato." The store is expected to open by mid-September.
Even President Obama couldn't resist a coconut cone from Mount Desert Island Ice Cream in Bar Harbor during his visit to Maine last weekend. The sight of the leader of the free world enjoying his afternoon treat sent sales of coconut ice cream soaring at MDI's Bar Harbor and Portland stores, according to owner Linda Parker. More wholesale orders came rolling in as well.
Mount Desert Island Ice Cream opened in the Old Port in late May, wowing customers with unusual flavors such as blueberry basil sorbet and Girl Scouts Gone Wild ice cream.
Parker said she thought Portland was ripe for a new ice cream shop and "a good fit" for her. She's been selling wholesale to restaurants here for years -- Havana South now serves her spicy Thai chili ice cream -- and has had numerous requests from local scoop shops to sell her products.
Parker, who boasts that she "did salt caramel before it was cool," believes it's her inventive flavors that set her apart from other homemade, gourmet ice cream shops.
Customers are much more sophisticated about flavor profiles because of the popularity of things like the Food Network, she said. That means they are more accepting of different tastes and are willing to eat more adventurously.
"Five years ago, when I started (in Bar Harbor) and I was making chocolate wasabi, people were, like, 'uhhh,'" she said. "But now people are, like, 'chocolate wasabi, yes.' They're just much more open to the different kind of flavors that we're producing."
Parker likes to push the envelope with flavors, not to be sensational but "because sometimes you can have really surprising, fantastic results by pairing new things."
"I get inspiration from a lot of sources, especially desserts from foreign countries," she said. "For example, we make a Sherry Catalana, which is based on a cream dessert from the Catalan region of Spain, which is a creamy sherry base with cinnamon."
When Parker read that lime and cucumber were a popular flavor combination in Iran, she developed a lime-cucumber sorbet.
If Parker's sorbets (blueberry basil, star anise, orange tarragon) sound as if they'd be even better with a shot of gin or vodka, well, Parker is one step ahead of you.
She's developed a cocktail drink line she'll start selling in the store soon.
"The cucumber-lime goes really well with gin," she said. "They're not sorbets, but they're similar to sorbets. They're less sweet and they're icier."
Despite its adventuresome menu, MDI Ice Cream has held onto the classics that customers love -- chocolate, vanilla, cookies and cream, mint chip.
Joshua Bodwell of Biddeford stopped into the store with his visiting family recently to try the mint chip, which is his favorite flavor. It amused him to watch his relatives try to make up their minds about what they wanted.
"I thought they were going to fill up on the samples," he said, laughing. "They each had four or five samples, you know? They just couldn't decide. It was hilarious."
Bodwell's choice was easy because he tries mint chip wherever he goes.
"They've definitely taken it to another level there at MDI," he said.
Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at: mgoad@pressherald.com
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A pistachio and black raspberry ice cream cone is served at Garside's. |
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