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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 28, 1982)
In search of the ideal ice cream Ice cream Smooth, cool, creamy ice cream It’s the one thing besides springtime that makes living in Eugene worthwhile. You see, Eugene has more than its share of ice creameries, with a variety of flavors and styles Depending on one’s tastes, the Ideal Ice Cream could be found in a .number of places, from the high tech pink plastic chain restaurant to the “new kid on the block,’’ an “authentic Italian" ice cream place with Italian top-40 songs on the stereo Although the specific flavor and qualities of the Ideal Ice Cream is a hopelessly individual choice, we at distractions wanted to establish an objective comparison, some sort of overall ranking of some of the local ice cream shops Also, it was a hot evening and we were hungry Because of the limited size of our pocketbooks and our stomachs, we were forced to limit our study to shops in the general area of the University campus Because flavors vary from shop to shop, and because you will never find two people who agree on their favorite flavor, we felt it necessary to sample a variety of flavors At the same time, each shop has its specialties, so we also or dered what the friendly scoopers recommended as the most popular flavor Then we remembered that many people go for ice cream especially for sundaes, while other people only like cones, so we had to take that into account In the end, we ordered a hot fudge sundae and two cones (one our choice and one which the friendly scooper suggested as the most popular flavor) from each ice creamery Our four judges then not ed the serving size, texture, flavor, appearance and overall enjoyability One judge also tested the ice creams' ability to stick to his clothes Although we had intended to go through our list alphabe tically, a lack of communica tion and some confusion about the alphabet led us to our first stop Gantsy's. Gantsy's is sort of like the old time soda fountains you’ve seen pictures of. only aged slightly, and with luminous yellow and green paint. They sport an extremely long list of flavors — we stopped counting at 78 Some of the flavors are a bit exotic, like Moolky Wayee and the now-defunct Chicken Ripple, but no one can say they don't have a good selection Our choice was Irish Cof fee The friendly scooper recom mended German Chocolate "I get a slight refrigerator flavor . . ” started Refrigerator Mouth ‘ Yeah,” agreed the Quiet One, “like it's been ‘Stored!" finished Conehead Slurp, slurp, chomp, slurp Drip ’It's very milky, rather than creamy Thin, very light and milky, with little ice crystals." "That's because it’s been stored," deduced Conehead triumphantly "But it’s still ice " “I just got a strand of coconut about an inch long!” announced Banana Hater "Are you sure? You sure it's not something else?” Banana Hater paled slightly. Slurp, slurp, chomp, slurp. “This cone stinks! Can you smell that?” said Conhead "Awww, you just don’t like plain cones It smells nice and cone ish.” Slurp, slurp, chomp, slurp. After ascertaining that the sundae was topped with a real maraschino cherry (not a red grape) and with real continued on page 4
