Coldstone
 

In the ice cream world, there are grocery store ice cream (of which my favorite brand is Ben and Jerrys) and there is "Go out and get it" ice cream.

There is a Coldstone down the street from work. I went for the first time 4 weeks ago. Now I go once a week (on Sundays) and have ice cream for lunch.

Coldstone blows 31 flavors away.

Does anyone else know a chain that is better?

We had a local ice cream shoppe here that was similar to coldstone - they added the stuff into the ice cream flavor of your choice - and they had very interesting flavors. It was called the Inside Scoop and it was great. Then Coldstone came and ran them out of town.

Coldstone is good... but that infernal singing. Just give me my damn ice cream and let me eat in silence.

My favorite - mocha with brownie.

As far as the quality of the ice cream itself goes, Baskin-Robbins does hold its own with Cold Stone Creamery, Maggie Moo's, etc. I would never turn my nose up at a scoop of Baskin-Robbins Peanut Butter & Chocolate or Chocolate Fudge.

(Although the Baskin-Robbins I stopped at a couple of weekends ago lost some cool points when they had ~16-20 flavors available. HELLO? Thirty-fucking-ONE. It's only your goddamned TRADEMARK.)

You go to Cold Stone for the mix-ins, obviously, and while they are good, I find them fairly interchangeable with Maggie Moo's and a lot of local ice cream parlors that do the same thing, like the Ice Cream Co. or the late lamented Hillary's in West Chester. Not bad at all, but not head-and-shoulders above everyone else, either.

A good banana ice cream is better than a good anything else. I do mine with fudge sauce.

ew. banana flavored everything is nasty. except bananas. go figure.

I like banana malts....heavy on the malt. Yummm! Until my tummy starts realizing all the dairy I dumped into it. Then its UGGGHH.

I don't go out for icecream anymore. I go for gellato. Upstate NY has a large Italian-American community so we have quite a few gellaterias.

Gellato > _any_ ice cream.

There is one ice cream place I like but I've only seen them in missouri & illinois. They're called Sheriden's Frozen Custard.

totally with you on that one. although if it's blended in, like a banana and mango smoothie, it's not so bad.

A friend of mine swears that there is nothing better than Coldstone's cake batter ice cream. I haven't tried it yet though. I forget everytime we're in KoP, too focused on Blue Pacific sushi I guess.

It does taste like cake batter... but it's scary. I would rather eat cake batter than that ice cream. The ice cream is too weird.

I know that probably makes no sense.

Coldstone is good, but there is a place called Marble Slab that is the same thing, but has a much bigger selection of ice cream flavors.

Cheesecake ice cream with graham crackers, strawberries and bananas in it... :drool:

But I was raised on Baskin Robbins, so it’s still one of my favorites. One scoop Chocolate Fudge ice cream (sweet chocolaty-ness) and one scoop Daiquiri Ice (sour limey-ness).

I just had a berry cheesecake selection from coldstone yesterday....

Cheesecake Ice Cream, graham cracker, strawbs, bluebs, raspbs.

YUM!

At coldstone my wife absolutely lives for the Cake Batter ice cream. i usually get the Chocolate Chip Cookie dough, but their malts are great as well. i like coldstone because they are always, always friendly and generous with their servings.

maggie moo? not so much. just didn't like the whole experience and i don't know why.

Marble slab? very good. probably a little better in the products department than coldstone, but i like the coldstone experience better. they are just a lot friendlier.

now i may have to head over there for lunch. :biggrin:

Daquiri Ice... Day-YUM that's good eating!!

...Slightly off topic...

Hagen-Daz used to have a sorbet flavor called Cassis. Am I the only one that remembers this? If yes, I'll just quit here because it transcends words. Essence of black currants, prepared in heaven, this is what would have been the dessert course for the Last Supper, had there been any justice at all. Anyone?

My personal favorite is tempura, or fried, ice cream at Japanese joints. So damn good. And damn near impossible to do at home (can be purchased premade and frozen at some chinese groceries).

Are there other big chains aside from Friendly's, DQ, Baskins and Coldstone? None seem to come to mind.

For anyone in Boston or NYC, there is Emack & Bolio's, which is consistently solid across all of its flavors. Unfortunately, they use a lot of chocolate chips in many flavors, and I'm not a huge fan of those. I usually get "Grasshopper Pie": mint cookies 'n cream.

If you are ever in St. Louis go to Ted Drew's frozen custard. This stuff is so rich it could buy out Bill Gates and have change left over. :p

Anyone remember Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour? I had a birthday there once when I was a little one. They brought out a trough full of different flavored ice cream scoops with a ton of candles and we all got free straw hats. :)

HOLY SHIT, someone else remembers Farrell's!

There used to be a Farrell's at Granite Run Mall, right down the road from me, across from the Rustler Steakhouse (another oh-why-won't-they-bring-THAT-back memory). All you had to do was tell them that it was someone's birthday, didn't matter whose or whether it was true or not, and the lights would flash and bells would go off and pots would be banged with spoons like it was a goddamned air raid or something.

Then we'd go from there to Gino's, _another_ chain that Marriott managed to screw up. Damn, I'd give a finger for a Gino Giant some days.

hush your mouth, boy.

There is never anything "unfortunate" about an overage of chocolate chips.

It was a moment of great sadness when a terrible accident occured involving my giant Coke glass.

I spent a lot of time at that Granite Run Mall Farrell's too.

My friend forksBob and I would go there, and get the big Coke, and what we called a "Super" Purist.

The Purist was a massive goblet filled with six scoops of vanilla ice cream, served up with a BUCKET (no lie) of hot fudge, and they would bring you more if you needed it. Our "Super" version was made with chocolate ice cream.

We never went for the Birthday gambit, because we didn't want the Ice Cream Mountain.

I hear the food was good too, but I never bother with anything that wasn't the ice cream.

They are sorely missed.

Oh yeah ... the day they converted the Gino's on High Street into a Pizza Hut was a moment of great sadness. I always thought they had the best fried chicken (I'm not a big burger with goo on it fan). Back in the day the only place you could get secret recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken was Gino's.

I have never been able to understand the thing about chocolate. It's good, yeah...as a brownie, or covering a piece of fruit, like a cherry, but just on its own? For its own sake? Nah. Can someone explain the chocolate thing?

If you don't get it, no one will ever be able to explain it to you. It's like describing color to a blind man, or music to the deaf.

Please, case, just don't bother. That means just that much more for me. Really, no biggie.

Um, are you gonna eat that?

i do not have a sweet tooth. none. except for chocolate chip cookies and good ice cream. i like choloate chips in both of them.

I should clarify.

For some reason, I don't mind the little chocolate nuggets so much. What I was referring to was the actual chocolate chips - the thin squares that are oft really crunchy/brittle and sometimes hard to eat. It's those that really bother me.

Blech.

Broke down and went to Coldstone tonight. The flavor for the month of April was Red Licorice - it tasted just like a twizzler! It was really weird... I just didn't expect it to taste so real - much like a jelly belly.

Anyway - I had coffee with brownie - it was fantastic. They didn't have mocha today :(.

Are we talking about Coldstone CREAMERY? Maybe it is a different chain out here in California, but I went there once and will never go again. Consumer Reports just covered them too, and said the same thing as my impression - that the ice cream itself is bland and tastless and the attraction is the handsfull of "extras" they mix in, stuff you can get anywhere and produce the same results by mixing it into a half-melting a quart of plain stuff you got at the supermarket. Just wondering if somebody else is sharing a name with the chain that neither I nor Consumer Reports think is worth the money.

I agree - Coldstone's is overrated - I had to keep telling the girl to add more mix-ins because I just couldn't taste it - Farrell's memory: cheerleading squad intiation: had to eat a Pig's Trough with our hands tied behind our backs. Not a pretty sight.

Tonchi, try to find a Marble Slab. MUCH better ice cream.

Not pretty to whom? I think the idea of an ice cream covered cheerleader has a certain appeal. In fact, I bet there's a market for such an image.

Now, before y'all put a big ol' checkmark in the "prevert" box next to my name, I want to make clear, I'm the proud papa of a varsity high school cheerleader. I guess you wouldn't call it "pretty" but it would be "pretty funny"!

I'm getting a Coldstone Ice cream cake for my graduation... I'm really excited... more so about the cake than actually graduating.

I will share the cake experience once we have it.

Frankly if I want stuff mixed in my ice cream, I'm happier with a DQ Blizzard. Upmarket ice cream with stuff mixed into it isn't all that much different.

We have quite a few dairies near here that have their own ice cream lines ... now that's some awesome. The ice cream you're eating now was in a field out behind the store only a few days ago ... there's an ongoing competition between them on the ice cream flavors and attractions. Most people like the one without the e. coli, though.

(Homer Simpson voice) MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...e. coli mix in....
:yum:

Do you get Halo Farm ice cream out your way? That stuff is great. I'm not sure how far it gets distributed - I've only seen it in a few grocery stores and at the farm store itself in Ewing, NJ. The ice cream shop in Princeton, Halo Pub, kicks quite a bit of booty too.

While they have great homemade ice cream, they don't have mix-ins like Thomas Sweets.
:headshake

The University of Maryland dairy made ice cream they sold at the dining hole. Their coffee flavor was pretty darn good. Unfortunately it also contained copious quantities of E.coli, salmonella, or other nasties. Took me a while to figure it out because there were plenty of other foods to make one sick at the dining hole.

I haven't had Coldstone, but since they push mix-ins I'd guess the ice cream itself isn't all that good. How's that for prejudice?

No Halo Farms here ... the three we have are Freddie Hill Farms, Merrymead Farms (which is the one with the nationally covered e. coli outbreak and a dead kid ... the e. coli wasn't in the ice cream, it was on the cows in the petting zoo), and Rosenberger's Dairy Wagon ... although Rosenbergers is a huge commercial dairy and has no cows on the premises. They make ice cream for commercial sale beyond their "Dairy Wagon" store on the plant grounds.