Episode 2: The Ice Cream State

Listen to Episode 2 of the CT Perks & Recreation Podcast

Hit the road with us - no packing required. The CT Perks & Recreation™ Podcast is your monthly guide to discovering the best of Connecticut, told like a road trip with a friend who knows all the hidden gems (and has strong opinions about snacks along the way).

In Episode 2, The Ice Cream State, we turn the whole map into a sundae. We'll check out UConn's legendary Dairy Bar and farm stand scoops in Simsbury, sample the Newtown creamery named best ice cream shop in the country, and enjoy small-batch standouts from Milford to Granby. Along the way, you'll hear from the people behind the cows, behind the counters, and even from an ice cream super fan who turned exploring the Connecticut ice cream trails into a full time business.

Guests-

Bill Sciturro, Manager of UCONN Creamery 

Christiana Barabe, owner of Honeycone Craft Ice Cream

Craig Behun, CT Ice Cream Tour

Transcript

0:05

Hello, lovely humans, and welcome back to Perks and Recreation, your monthly invitation to fall in love with Connecticut, one snack, trail, or small town surprise at a time. I'm Amanda LG, voice actor, tea enthusiast, Connecticut Explorer, and for this month, and let's be honest, every month, an ice cream fanatic. Okay, even more honest. My family and I have been researching this episode for over a decade. It's very clear. This state is confidently an ice cream powerhouse. When I first moved here, I did not think, ah yes, this is where I will become an amateur dairy critic. I was just trying to reconcile moving here from a Midwestern small town. But then the recommendations started. You know how it goes. One person says, Oh, you have to go to this one ice cream place. Then another person jumps in with, no, no, that one's fine, but our place is the real deal. There are words like artisan and flavor combinations you've never even considered, but absolutely have to try. Suddenly you've got a list, a map, and at least three different people insisting they'll personally drive you to their favorite spot. So my family and I did what any reasonable people would do, especially if they lived in a state whose flagship university literally runs one of the most popular spots around. We started treating ice cream like a research project. On weekend days around the state, we'd inevitably do a Google search for ice cream near me. We'd drive to little farm stands, we found tiny main streets and downtown institutions, spots that have been in business for decades, and others that popped up in the last few years. And somewhere between farm fields, campus quads, seaport docks, and ridiculously photogenic scoops, you realize Connecticut isn't just a place that has ice cream. It's an ice cream destination. So today's episode is like my summer dream. All ice cream all the time. We are covering all different sorts of shops in hopes you check one out. No time like the present to find a new special treat or revisit a regular favorite. We'll cover the whole state a few times over. So pop into the one nearest you, or make a day of it and take that drive to one a bit further afield. Or hey, do both. I don't judge. I hope you're hungry, because we're going to rapid fire cover a lot of ground this month. Because you can't reasonably expect me to keep it to half a dozen places. Plus, we'll hear firsthand from some of the ice cream makers and eaters about what makes a perfect pint. This podcast is all about the stories packed into Connecticut, just waiting to be told. This month, those stories come in waffle cones. Let's start with the elephant, or maybe cow in the room, the one I've already mentioned by name, and the place every ice cream connoisseur in Connecticut has probably visited or at least wish listed. First stop, Yukon Dairy Bar and Stores. If you've ever wanted to eat ice cream that came from cows, you can basically wave to, this is your moment. Tucked into the agricultural heart of Yukon's campus, the dairy bar makes its ice cream using milk from the university's own dairy herd. It's one of the original cow-to-cone operations. The dairy bar itself has been open since 1953, but the creamery behind the retail establishment dates back to the early 1900s. Step inside to join students, alumni, families with kids trying to see over the counter, and the occasional person who drove in from somewhere like East Haddam just to get their signature husky tracks. The flavor board changes, but you can usually find the Yukon themed favorites alongside the classics. Once you've got your cupper cone, leave a little time to wander up Horseburn Hill and check out the cows. It's a nice reminder that there's a full agricultural operation training the future ice cream makers of America. I got a chance to meet with Bill Scaturo, manager of the Yukon Creamery, which provides all the ice cream to the dairy bar. And in addition to getting a very cool behind-the-scenes tour, he told me all about their specific process and why the dairy bar ice cream is extra delicious. My name is Bill Scaturo. I'm the manager of dairy manufacturing here at the Yukon Creamery. I've been here since 2007, and my job is to uh take the milk from our cows and turn it into the product that everyone's uh loves to come and enjoy, and uh to do so while teaching Connecticut and the surrounding states best practices in dairy manufacturing. Aaron Powell Talk to me about your day-to-day. I came in today and you are you're making the flavor today. So we make ice cream mix from scratch, which is pretty unusual this day and age for someone as small as us to do that, and we then turn it into ice cream. We then give it to dining services who runs the retail area. So our job is to make the products and prepare them for retail sale. So you're talking to the people at the back that uh the oombaoompas of the world that wear our little uniforms and run around behind the glass that you can see when you come to the dairy bar. We're a very small part of the College of Agriculture. If we start from the top, Yukon was an agricultural school. It's a land grant university back in the 1800s. Uh, Yukon is much, much bigger than that now, uh, really prized around the state for what it does. And in that university is the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources. They have water resources, land resources, forestry resources. They teach education on everything agricultural and health that you can think of. In that college is a department called animal science, which we're part of. Animal science is about animal products, animal industries. So we have meat sciences, dairy sciences, poultry sciences, equine sciences, and so we're the food side of the dairy science program in the department of animal science in the College of Agriculture at Yukon. And we're very small. And one of the things that we do that's very important to us here at Yukon is we keep everything about education. So there are dairy foods classes here in the department, and so we bring in the dairy students from that dairy foods class every year to see the plant and to make their own ice cream flavors, and they did that about a month ago, and next week they judge it. And that's the one that that class of 14 judges to be the best, we will make as a full run in somewhere between August and October. We've done that, I think this is our fourth year in a row. So Do they love that? Is that like so fun for you? Yeah. You know, we we have the the dairy foods kids come in and they they make ice cream and they learn how to make ice cream. We have we do a lot of extension work and education for the public about best practices. The state will send people to us. Uh Department of Ag will send us people and go, hey, they want to make cheese. Can you help them learn how to make cheese? Yep. Hey, you want to make ice cream? And we get those calls all the time. So yeah, we we like our education. Back to the ice cream. Sure. Talk to me about uh the process of creating a new flavor, who's involved in deciding, and what do you think makes a a new flavor good or any flavor, I guess. Well, I'm gonna start with the bet last question first. Okay. Um people always laugh when I say that no flavor is gonna be popular to everybody, but everyone will find their favorite. So I made a honey vanilla ice cream two months ago. The people that loved it will be asking for it for a decade. And the rest of the people didn't like it at all, and that's okay. Everyone has a favorite flavor. Some people like it sweet, some people don't like it sweet, some people like a big chip, some people don't like a big chip. So we don't really worry about making everybody happy. We we want to make what we think will have a following. And so when we want to make a new flavor, we look at current trends, what's popular out there right now. Back when red velvet was really popular, we went and made a red velvet ice cream. Back when cake batter with sprinkles were was really popular, we did that. So we just look for trends. And then we when we uh see an opportunity to put a new flavor on the board, it's a very organic process. We'll ask around amongst my employees, amongst the dairy bar employees, people of the department. We take suggestions for the public, not overtly, like people will say, Hey, why don't you guys make a cherry ice cream? And we'll throw a file it away. And then we just start working on different variations. We'll make a sweet cherry or a tart cherry. In fact, senior scoop this year, another food contest that the university does, seniors every year get to make their own flavor, is cherry ice cream with chocolate chips and fudge. It's out now. And it we haven't made a cherry ice cream in almost 15 years. So we made a couple variations. We decided on the tartness, the sweetness, the color, the kind of chip, the kind of fudge. We made a couple of iterations of that. And once we finally settled on it, we bought large volumes of everything and we made it run. So we just threw it together and said, yep, this will work. And then some people love it because it's really tart, and some people hate it because it's really tart. Really tart. Yeah. So at 7 a.m. this morning, we started the process of prepping the equipment, and we went up to the um the milking parlor at the cow farm, and we pulled milk from the tank. Fresh raw milk. Okay. We brought that raw milk down, uh, 175 gallons of it, and we put it in our pasteurizer along with all of our other ingredients, and we're pasteurizing that milk, sugar, and cream into a pasteurized ice cream mix. We'll homogenize it, cool it, and age it overnight. And tomorrow we'll take all 350 gallons of finished ice cream mix and we'll turn it into coffee espresso crunch ice cream. Are there any flavors that started as experiments and became unexpected favorites? Yeah, there is one. We were asked to make a celebrity flavor about eight years ago, and it started with a vanilla ice cream, and we wanted to put in Nestle crunch pieces, and then we went out and we got a strawberry flavor, and we made some batches, and it was it was okay. And somebody suggested, well, what if we replaced it with something like caramel? And we replaced the strawberry with a salted caramel, and so it's vanilla ice cream with Nestle crunch pieces and salted caramel, and it was so popular that it became a permanent flavor, which doesn't usually happen, and now it competes with Husky Tracks as the third most popular flavor on any given week. Wow. It's called salted caramel crunch. It was never supposed to be permanent, and it is now, and it's probably never going away because the salty caramel and the Nestle Crunch sweetness with the texture along with the vanilla ice cream is delicious. We actually made it yesterday. Talk to me about Husky Tracks. It's the consistently with salted caramel, the third most popular flavor. So we make our mix and then we make it into vanilla ice cream, and then we add Reese's peanut butter cups, and then we swirl in a thick um uh milk chocolate fudge, and we freeze it, put it out, and husky tracks, there you go. I said it's third most popular with the other flavors. Salty caramel and Husky Tracks will run pretty consistent. Last week we sold 29 tubs of Husky Tracks, and last week we only sold 20 of salty caramel. So last week Husky was the winner. Next week it might be different. Even the bottom ones are extremely popular. If you think about this, we've been making ice cream here since 1953. We only can make 24 flavors. So we've made a lot of flavors that didn't survive. Even number 24 is more popular than about a thousand other things. Wow. So even when I say we don't sell a lot of toasted almond, toasted almond is extremely popular. That's my daughter's favorite flavor. My wife's one of my wife's favorites. And so even the number 24 on sales is still extremely popular. It's better than strawberry, it's better than chocolate chip, it's better than ginger because we've made those and they aren't as popular enough. And they don't sell as much, yeah. Yeah, so we keep the ones that do. But we have to make a lot of ice cream during this process I've described. It's 180 tubs in a day. It has to be popular enough to sell 180 tubs quickly. One of the things that makes our ice cream special is that we get milk from our own cows. Most people don't get to do that. And when we take that milk and we put it in our slow pasteurizing process, we make a better product than most people do because we've stayed true to these old traditions. Low-temp pasteurizing makes better ice cream. Everyone knows it, but it's so much more expensive than you could get anywhere else that everyone's moved away from it, except for us small producers. So we make the ice cream, we put it out front, and then people can come here, buy the ice cream, walk the hill, see the cows, enjoy the hikes. Right in the middle of Connecticut agriculture is just a wonderful thing. So we have a nice little place here carved out that people have enjoyed. They estimate 225,000 people came through here last year. Wow. Um and people are often surprised just how much ice cream we pushed through. But I'll end with this for this question. People think we get slow in the summer. The amount of school camps and school buses that we'll be pulling up here every day in the summer is amazing. And then when that's over with, it's time for homecoming weekend and basketball games and football games. And when that's over with, it's time for alumni weekend and graduation weekend. So we're always seem to be very busy. And finally, what's your favorite flavor? Oh, now you're gonna step in it. I'm gonna say my favorite flavor, and if you balk, I'm gonna give you the long answer. My favorite flavor is vanilla. I'm not gonna bulk, but I do I do want to know why. I'm an ice cream maker. I make cheese. I'm not a cheesemaker, but I love ice cream. I've loved ice cream since it was my very first job in I am from the 80s, and we could we had full-time jobs and outside of school in seventh and eighth grade. So I was eighth grade, I got my first job at ice cream store and I fell in love with it. For an ice cream maker, you have to show off with your vanilla. You can't show off with Husky Tracks because you've got peanut butter and fudge in there. So it's pure. It's the one you can be most proud of when you do it right, and we make a great vanilla. Um but most people don't realize what vanilla is. Do you know where vanilla comes from? An orchid. Now, this orchid seed only grows in a few places around the world. You probably could mention a couple of them because you see it on the labels for vanilla. It's very tropically sensitive. It can only be grown in a few places. It's an orchid plant. It needs to be hand pollinated, it needs to be hand-picked, it needs to be cured, dried, processed. We take this beautiful, complicated flavor profile. We put it in our wonderfully made mix. I get to show it off to everybody. Vanilla's always going to be my favorite because it's a pure flavor. You have given me a newfound appreciation for the floor. I usually people, what's your favorite flavor? I go vanilla and they laugh at me and go, oh, why? That's why. On the other side of the state is the flagship home of a dairy with an even longer history than Yukon's, and that's Arathusa Farm. Now, with a couple of other locations across the state, the flagship home in Lichfield County traces roots back to a small dairy farm founded way back in 1868. They've come a long way since then, with current owners George and Tony developing a dairy herd back in 2001. And not just any dairy herd. To be clear, there are several hundred cows, and they've won more awards than I could even begin to list here. Arethusa is what happens when you combine obsessive dairy standards with a flair for presentation. I'm only kind of joking when I say I believe my sister and brother-in-law in Colorado come to Connecticut to visit Arathusa first and us second. You go in for a cone, and somehow you walk out with cheese, yogurt, an extra pint, and a need to reorganize your fridge to fit it all. But you don't need historic to find a perfect pint. With no shortage of awards of their own, Ashley's Ice Cream is sort of the off-beat cool cousin of the Connecticut ice cream world, the one who knows everyone and somehow always has a frisbee handy. Indeed, the name comes from a famous frisbee catching dog. Born in New Haven in 1979, Ashley's has its roots deep in Yale territory. It started as the go-to treat for stressed-out students on long study nights. Over the years, Ashley's spread across the shoreline like sprinkles on a Sunday, from Guildford to Hamden and out to Madison. Their vibe is homemade and dependable. The walls are lined with photos of smiling customers and those inevitable frisbees. While the smell, that sweet mix of waffle batter, practically pulls you through the door. They've racked up over 30 best ice cream in Connecticut titles, and for good reason. The scoops taste like they were made about five minutes before you ordered them. It's the kind of local ice cream shop where you promise yourself you'll just get one scoop, and somehow you end up debating yourself on whether a brownie sundae with fudge and sprinkles still counts as just ice cream. Not every ice cream shop with a farm attached has to be a sizable operation, of course. Drive some backroads in Connecticut for a bit, and it's clear. Arathusa isn't the only farm game in town. Here, the roads get narrower, and there's a calming pastoral quality where you might find a back road and a tiny parking lot leading to some of the freshest, tastiest ice cream you've ever had. One such place, Tolmetto Farm in Simsbury, feels like the quintessential Connecticut farm ice cream stop. You pull up and it looks simple. A farm stand and open fields. Then you notice the line. Tolmetto is one of those, if you know, you know places. The portions are big, the flavors offer an array of classic options, mixed with unique twists, and everything tastes like summer should taste. You already know I'm a tea person, and Tolmetto Farm usually has at least one flavor made with the stuff. Anytime Raspberry Iced tea ice cream is on the menu, I make my family hop in the car. You grab your ice cream and then drift toward the grass or a picnic table, or into the small farm store attached around the back. Kids run around, grown-ups linger, and time does that nice stretchy thing it only seems to do when your phone is in your pocket and you're busy with a cone. Further north in Enfield, you've got Collins Creamery. The ice cream is homemade and unfussy. This is a place where you go for a drive, roll down the windows, and end up at a picnic table saying, we should do this more often, between bites. Back the other way towards Fairfield County, Plasco's Farm and Trumbull is a nice hybrid. Part creamery, part market, part coffee shop. Part I didn't mean to buy a pie, but here we are. You can get your ice cream, then wander through the market for baked goods and local products, and call it a highly balanced outing. It's a good reminder that the farm experience and the local products they provide are readily available throughout the state. Crisscrossing the state again, this time to the quiet corner, we end up at Salem Valley Farms Ice Cream in Salem. It's not on the beaten path. You probably aren't ending up here by accident, but you're going because it's worth the trip. The seating is green and peaceful, and the ice cream has that homemade richness that says, yes, this was absolutely worth your afternoon, and since you're here anyway, may as well get a double. While on my continuous search for new ice cream in Connecticut, I came across someone who may be an even bigger ice cream fan than me. His name is Craig Bahoon, and he's one of the owners of CT Ice Cream Tour, a Connecticut-based mobile food truck and social media brand that curates ice cream flavors from over 300 of the state's best shops. He shared a little bit about what he thinks makes Connecticut ice cream so special. My name is Craig Bahoon. We created the CT Ice Cream Tour on May 22nd, 2015, so 11 years now. We've been to over 350 different ice cream places, most of them in Connecticut, but some uh beyond. Uh and now we have a truck that we use to sell what we think is the best ice cream available from the state, different flavors from the probably 15 or 20 different creameries in our state. That's so cool. Uh and not something I had ever heard of before. I think we're the only ones. I mean I would think so. So after I leave here, I drove it took me just over an hour to get here today. And then I gotta go back, drop the ice cream in my freezer, and then I have to go to Wilton to pick up some more. So you spend a lot of time driving around picking up ice cream from all over the place. And usually I'll map out a route. So like I would a lot of times I would start here and then I'd work my way back to LaCroix in Plainville or Salem Valley and Rocky Hill or anything like that. So I try to make a whole day of it to make it more efficient. That makes sense. What a process. Yeah. So what makes ice cream so magical for you? I kind of still I'm 42, but I feel like I'm 12. And I feel like ice cream is like the kid version of going out for a couple beers and like 100%. Cut and loose, and like, you know, you're never in a bad mood. I I don't know. I can't remember a time where I've been in a bad mood eating ice cream like my parents would take me there after baseball games, basketball games, good report card. Like, you know, they're not they're happy memories. Like nobody's taking you to Carvel to tell you that the grandpa died or anything like this. I don't think so. But is your love of ice cream an everyday thing or is it like seasonal? Do you I mean I think about it every day. I don't always eat it every day, even though I have plenty to to choose from house. Yeah. But I try not to eat it every day, probably three or four times a week only. And we eat it all all year. All right. February, it's cold. It doesn't matter. I prefer that because it's not I don't like it when it gets melty and you have to like rush through it and like I'm dripping. I've ruined so many pairs of pants with like chocolate ice cream dripping out of the bottom of a waffle cone. In a July, a hot July day. Yeah. I mean, especially here. It's like this is what I picture like just a nice melty cone sitting by the farm. I mean, some people only eat in the summer. That's like, you know, when people only go to church on Christmas or Easter. Like we we do it all year. We worship all year. So your ice cream is as a spiritual experience for you. Yeah, exactly. I like that. Yeah, we're we're kind of the same. Uh we get sad when some of the places close for summer. And so it's like trying to figure out like what's open. So I do have a list uh on our on our Instagram page of places that are open all year. It's constantly changing. But there are some uh like tried and true places that we really love that are open twelve months a year. Some might close for a month or a few weeks here or there, but there's a lot of places that are open all year round. But it's nice. Talk to me about the CT ice cream tour truck, 'cause I just I had never heard of anything like that and I thought that sounded so cool. It started as a family project. I mean the whole tour has been a family project. It was just like a blog basically. We were just goofing around one summer when my my son, who's now eleven, was born and we were looking for stuff to do with them. Plus he liked to nap in the car. So we would just throw them in the car and drive as long as we could. And we read an article in Connecticut magazine that had the top ten places in Connecticut, so we said we're gonna go hit all those. And then we just kept going. Like I remember when we hit 50, I was like, this is insane, and now we're at 350. You're like, we have to keep going. Yeah. But the truck itself was never really in any of our original plans. And then people started more and more to ask for flavor recommendations, or like, oh my god, we would try something. They wish they could try it. So I was like, you know, maybe we could kind of get all these flavors in one place. There's a few, a couple flavors that really like uh kind of spawn the idea. Twinkie from Kelly's Cone Connection, which nobody else has, and Guinness from Cat and Creamery, which has yeah, it's got little chocolate flakes in there. Um, but it was like you can never find that anywhere else. So I wanted to kind of collect them all and get them in one place. And we still have our standard chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, all that stuff, but then there's things that are only available in a couple shops here or there. You want to provide that a unique flavor scale. That makes a lot of sense. You showed me a picture just a minute ago uh that is delightful. Can we talk about your first memory with ice cream? Where were you? And and you know, what what was that? Um I mean, my dad is a huge ice cream fan, so we would always um have Sundays at the house, and now my dog's name's Sunday. And is sitting right here and is super adorable. But uh we're in Lake Winnipesaki, I think it was five or six years old, and I had something called Smurf Berry Crunch, and my mouth was blue for a couple days after I ate it. God knows what kind of dyes are in there. Actually, we have uh we have a blue ice cream now from Gopher down in Fairfield County, and it's all natural, um, like made with plant-based uh dyes. So I know it wasn't made like that back in 1989 or 1990 when I had that, but it was delicious and I loved it, and we got a good picture of it. You think about it years later. For sure. It was at a Polaroid, that's how long ago this was. Yeah, I love that. Did you grow up near a particularly Connecticut shop that you say shaped how you feel about ice cream, or was it just everything is we kinda grew I grew up in Ansonia um and there wasn't much ice cream there. There was a Bass and Robbins in Derby that we would go to a bit, but then Rich Farm opened up when I was like 10 or 11 years old in Oxford, which was like a I don't know, fifteen, twenty-minute drive, and I don't think I realized uh ten years old how lucky I was to have a place like that so close. Yeah. But I mean I got this I was very much a creature of habit, which I've changed. I would get chocolate with rainbow sprinkles every single time. Uh and now I rarely get sprinkles. I like the ice cream to like speak for itself, so no toppings. So once in a while, if a place has good homemade whipped cream, I'll get that. Okay, yeah. It's like, you know, if you're gonna get cheese pizza, that you can kind of compare them all together. So I like to no toppings, at least the first time I go to a place. So that you can like taste the consistency of the ice cream. That makes a lot of sense. I don't know if people realize how good we have it here. There are so many good spots, and I'm like a huge Connecticut history buff, and uh I'm actually a history major in college, and I love taking a Connecticut history course. Uh there's 169 towns in Connecticut, and there's like 85 or maybe more. It's it's changing every day pretty much. Uh so almost one homemade shop for every two towns in our state, and so many are fantastic. That's a crazy ratio. Yeah, it's it's insane. Uh especially when you consider some of the small towns like that don't have anything and you know, and there's but they have delicious ice cream somewhere, yeah. Yes. Uh and some towns have multiple. There's a few towns that have like like three or four fantastic places. But I would say like per capita or pound for pounds, Connecticut has as good or better than any other state. I know you got the dairy states out in the Midwest that probably have a couple good here or there, but like considering how small our state is, we have just fantastic amounts. Immense amounts of yeah. We like we I don't think we've gotten to your level, but we drive like all over the place all summer long. Like I will I will drive 45 minutes per ice cream. I do not care. Like I just have a dog. Yeah. Please do. I can't wait to I can't wait to talk about that. Have you had ice cream in other places? Oh yeah. Yeah. Like other states. Yeah, other states. I don't know. I've there's never been an ice cream that I've thought, well, this is better than anything I've ever had in Connecticut. No matter where I was. Yeah. Florida, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, whatever it's Connecticut still has like my top ten places, probably. Yeah, that makes sense to me because I when again when we moved here, I didn't know this was an ice cream destination, but boy is it. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what what makes it so, but it's it's awesome. Yeah, yeah. What's the most Connecticut flavor you've ever had? Something like you feel like maybe couldn't exist in another place. Um we actually just made a couple weeks ago, we went down the gopher ice cream, which is they have like eight locations in Fairfield County, down southern Fairfield County, and uh they asked us to collaborate on something called Constitution Cookie Crunch. So it's like Constitution State. Uh so that's biscoff uh cookie butter with biscoff pieces and chocolate flakes. Oh, that's absolutely delicious. Which I don't know, you might be able to get that. I think anything apple-y, like I love the fall flavors. Um, so whether it's Connecticut or New Englandy, like I love those. I I somebody's gotta make a pizza flavored ice cream for Connecticut, right? Yes, they do. How do we not have that? Yeah, we've had crazy ice cream. If you hear us right now, please make pizza ice cream. We'll be there. We'll come eat it. Absolutely. There's a we have a pizza episode coming up in a few months, and uh, I'm definitely willing to sample some pizza ice cream. Finally, um, the question that I ask everybody this episode: what is your favorite flavor? Um that's I don't know. I have two kids, which is my favorite kid. It changes by the day. My stock, like my go-to if I go to a new place, is chocolate and chocolate chip if they have them. Uh you just want to test everybody's against each other. Yes. So it's the basis of comparison. So I love chocolate chip. The the type of chips, some people use the big, huge chunks, which I don't love as much. I like a nice, like a flake. A little one. Yeah. Ashley's has my favorite uh variation of that. So Ashley's has five locations down the shoreline. And then as far as like unique flavors, I said Twinkie from Kelly's cone collection, Hamden. That sounds good. There's one right here at Tolmetto Farms in Simsbury that it's burnt sugar brulee, they called it. So if you've ever had, I love if I go to a restaurant and they give me a dessert menu and they don't have creme brulee, I'm just not ordering dessert. So I it's like creme brulee ice cream, and they have even like the caramelized sugar pieces in there, like stick to your teeth. It's so good. Sounds delicious. Uh so we sell that on the truck. Rasmanian Devil from Rich Farm is my dad's favorite. Chocolate mousse, if you like a real like chocolate chocolate from Big Dipper and Prospect, I've got uh s'mores from LaCroix and Plainville. They have they use a marshmallow base, which I like. Oh, I love marshmallow ice cream. Yeah, yeah. It's most people use chocolate or maybe even a graham flavored base, but this is marshmallow and I love it. And that's that's why we sell. Again, all these flavors that I love we sell on the truck for a reason. Because I love them and I think they're great, and everybody should try them. So do you go around sometimes and you're just like, oh, well, you know, this is going on the truck? Yes. Uh and a lot of times I'll, you know, I'll look at their menus and be like, oh my god, that's something I've never seen before. I gotta try it. I'll post on my Instagram, uh CT Ice Cream Tour, uh, when we're gonna be in public, and hopefully you can make it out. Now, let's follow the smell of salt water and sunscreen. There's something about eating ice cream near the water that just hits differently. The breeze, the sound of waves, the seagulls plotting tiny crimes. It all adds up. In Mystic, you've got Mystic Drawbridge ice cream, which feels like it was designed specifically for a movie montage. The shops sit near the drawbridge, with the river right there. You grab your cone, step outside, and you get the full show. Boats gliding under the bridge, the clank and rise of the drawbridge. Tourists deciding whether this is the moment for yet another photo. The ice cream is rich, the flavors are familiar, with just enough fun twists. And you walk away thinking, Yep, that was exactly what I wanted. Head west along the coast, and you'll find Walnut Beach Creamery in Milford. This place is all about the beach day vibe. You're walking up in sandy flip-flops, maybe still a little damp from the water, hair doing its own thing, and it's fine because everyone looks like that. You grab your ice cream, wander the boardwalk, and suddenly you remember why summer is worth putting up with humidity. And over in New London, Michael's Dairy offers vintage stand vibes with a coastal twist. This is the kind of place that shows up in family photo albums. It's the we stopped here after the beach soccer game concert spot. Grab a cone or Sunday, sit outside, and you can almost feel the decades layered onto that little patch of pavement. Okay, so this is the part of the map where ice cream becomes a personality. These shops are where people light up when they describe the flavors to you. First up, honey cone in Chester. Honeycomb leans into inventive, rotating flavors, things with brown butter notes, honeycomb, interesting spices, tea and textures. The menu might look a little different every time you visit, and that's part of the fun. You stand there, reading the board, trying to decide if you're in the mood for comfort or something a little more whimsical. Once you've made your choice, you can wander the little downtown, peek into shops, or just hang out and people watch. It's a full mini adventure. Confession, this is one of my favorite spots, and I had the pleasure of talking to one of the owners, Christiana Barraby. She and her mom Tula opened the shop in 2020. A hard time to start a new endeavor. But she explains how they've flourished in their community. My name is Christiana Barraby, so co-owner of Honey Cone Craft Ice Cream in Chester. I co-own it with my mom. It's very much a family-run business. Uh a lot of people, like friends and family, are involved as well. So you opened in 2020, which is not an easy time to start a thing. Uh tell me about the story. Tell me the story of Honey Cone and how it all came about. Absolutely. So my mom and I have always wanted to open up a business together, and there were a few different iterations of what that was going to look like. We had been discussing it for some years, and then we were working on an ice cream shop, and then COVID happened. So that was kind of an obviously very interesting event when you're building a new business. Yes. We really didn't have to make too many changes other than knowing we were not going to seek out a place that had a lot of seating and had a lot of people coming in. And when we saw that this location in Chester, which is the town that each of us has our home in as well, uh, that this location had opened, we realized it was just really perfect. Kind of knowing that people were less likely to want to be around a lot of people at that time. People weren't interested as much in going in and spending a lot of time in a sit-down restaurant. We thought ice cream for sure. My mom had been making ice cream for years. We just kind of scaled it up in this capacity, and it just kind of became a grab-and-go shop. And it was something that Chester didn't have at the time either. So you kind of filled a hole in the market around here. So both of us were making the ice cream in this location for the first, let's see, three years. We now have a factory location in Deep River, which is just a mile down the road. So that has really allowed us to scale up the amount that we're making. We do a ton of wholesale as well, which initially we were not doing. And we have at the factory a staff of, I believe, eight people right now, in addition to everyone who works here. So yeah, we were able to kind of offload some of that work that we were doing nonstop. And that has allowed us to grow a lot as well. Connecticut has a serious ice cream scene. How do you think Honeycomb fits into that landscape and what makes you stand out? I know what I think makes you stand out. I'm curious what you think makes you stand out. Yeah, so it definitely Connecticut has an amazing ice cream scene for sure. We really try and focus on fun flavors, combinations that you haven't necessarily heard of or even thought about. Um, if you, you know, look at the flavors that come out, we rotate the flavors every month and we want people to be really excited. So, you know, just for instance, this month, German chocolate, key lime pie, mango mascarpone. Um, and then of course, you know, vanilla bean, chocolate, pistachio. We have the classics as well. But we really wanted to focus on fun flavors that people, you know, would be excited to try for the first time. For sure. And that's every time we're coming down to this part of the state, we like check out your your flavors to see what you have on on, I guess, tap. Could it be? Yeah, on your spoop, on sah. And it uh they're always just excellent. Uh and also you have who also have some vegan and sorbet flavors, which is great for people who are dairy-free. We always try and have at least four vegan flavors in addition to sorbets. A lot of times, people who it whether they're vegan or lactose intolerant, if they just see that there are sorbets available, they're not as excited. Yes. If they see that there's a creamy coconut milk-based flavor, it kind of makes all the difference for them. So you partner with local vendors and organizations. How do you pick who you collab with? How do those partnerships work? So we really try and seek out people who have a similar mindset to us. So specifically Scott's Farms in Essex. We just love those guys. We source a lot of stuff for them in the summer months. Deep Hollow Farm, they are a no-till organic farm. We we get all of our basil for our blackberry basil ice cream from them. We just kind of love what they stand for. They're literally around the corner. They're in Chester. And we also like to work with Papaspiro's olive oil. They source olive oil from their family farms in Greece. So we get to make, um, let's see, we do basic olive oil ice cream, but also olive oil orange peel ice cream, which is a really big hit. We love that one as well. Yeah. You have a background in food and wine. You have a master's degree, a vineyard and winery management. So, how does that kind of translate to ice cream in the ice cream industry? Because I feel like while those are two separate things, like probably that helps you a whole lot with the running of a business in food. Yeah, absolutely. Um, a lot of experience just kind of understanding how a vineyard and winery would work, understanding logistics in that sense. Um, and in terms of actual winemaking, wine is obviously very different than ice cream. It's a lot more serious feeling, but there's still a lot to be said about, you know, discussing flavors. I find ice cream to be a lot more fun. Um, it's, you know, because it's less serious, you can kind of create more combinations versus expressing a wine that comes from a certain place. You can kind of create something a little bit more. That makes sense. So you like have more flexibility with like what you do as opposed to like this is the wine. You can like create what you're looking for flavor profile-wise. Yes, exactly. Can you talk to me about the process of creating a new flavor? How do you pick what flavors you're going to try next and how do you make them and make sure they taste good? Oh, yeah. So we usually start out with a base flavor, something we know that, you know, it's going to be a great ice cream base. One of our flavors that has been a huge hit that we recently came up with is called FOMO. It is a salted caramel ice cream with chocolate-covered potato chips, chocolate-covered pretzels, brownie bits, and a swirl of salted caramel. So, with that, of course, the idea is FOMO, nothing gets missed out. You're not missing out on anything. Right. Just kind of if you start with something you know you're going to like and adding stuff in. Lavender honey, I think, is a nice example as well. It's really simple, but that addition of lavender, or rather, that addition of honey to the lavender kind of brings it to the next level, also. It's a lot of fun coming up with flavors. We do also kind of stick with a lot of things, especially in December. We have orange chocolate, we have peppermint stick, Santa's milk and cookies. So of course, yeah. The flavors that people know, okay, I want that to come back this month. But there's also a lot of months that we're able to just kind of play around and see what's going to sound good that month. Do you have you had any that you particularly uh enjoy, like that you thought like this is great, or have you had any where you're like, oh, I thought this was gonna be amazing and it didn't quite work the way I wanted it to? Yes, a great example of the one that I was really excited about, but no one seemed to care about was our lilac ice cream. So we actually, yeah, we picked lilac flowers, steeped them in the milk base, uh, heated it up very gently to kind of get all of those flavors and aromas to come out. And I was obsessed with it. I thought it was so good, and we could only make a little bit because you're limited by how many lilac flowers you can get. And I don't know, I think people sometimes are a little weirded out by floral flavors. And then some people are super into it, but that was one that I thought, oh, this is gonna be the best seller. Ever hit. Yeah. No one cared, but I loved it. But other than that, there are kind of some surprise flavors. For instance, our sea salt straccitella is kind of like a s a salty chocolate chip ice cream. So we put Mediterranean sea salt into the base, and then we get chocolate, we melt it down, and then we refreeze it so it's kind of in little shards, right? Like our little slivers of chocolate. And it's just it's fantastic. We thought it would be great, but people really go crazy for that. Do you have any flavors or projects that are coming soon that you can tease and tell people about? Yes. In general, kind of coming up to the summer months, we are going to be doing a lot of things with fruit. So blueberries, strawberry, raspberry. It's kind of what people are craving in the summertime. And of course, in July, that's when we make our blackberry basil. And in August, we make our sweet corn blueberry. So those are both really labor-intensive flavors, but it's so worth it. And they're just they're so much fun, and everyone's always really excited for them. So those are coming up kind of in the next few months. Cool. Did you you said sweet corn blueberry? Sweet corn blueberry. Two things. One, how did you decide those flavors went well together? And two, what makes that a flavor that's specifically labor intensive? We get all of the corn from Scots. So it starts out with us driving down there. We get bags and bags and bags of ears of corn. We have to bring it back to the factory, clean it, shuck all the corn off, we cook it down, we add sugar to it, then we have to cool that, and that gets added to the ice cream base. In addition to that, we're making a blueberry variegate, which gets swirled in afterwards. So this is a multi-day process just because it takes so long with all of that corn, but also it's just it's a flavor that's strange sounding, and then you try it and you love it. It's kind of like a um, like a blueberry corn muffin, if I had to explain it. That's how we explain it when people ask. And in terms of knowing that those flavors would do well together, I mean, we had made cornbread ice cream with a corn base, and then we said, okay, blueberries are in season at the same time, or more or less, and we added that and it was just so good. It added that kind of sweet tanginess, that fruitiness to the corn. That's so, so good. One last question. What's your favorite flavor of ice cream? I love our coconut almond chip. We have it year-round. It sounds a little boring compared to the more crazy flavors that we make, but it's really anything with coconut in it, I probably go for the most. But it's a coconut ice cream, shredded coconut, mini chocolate chips, and crushed salted almonds. And it just has all the flavor that that I always want in a scoop of ice cream. Do you need a quick break from all the ice cream goodness? Let's get savory for a minute. Here's some info on the soon-to-be launched Connecticut TV to table trail. Connecticut isn't just charming, it's delicious. From award-winning chefs and the nation's number one pizza to acclaimed seafood and cozy cafes, the state is serving up world-class flavors at every turn. Now, you can follow the ultimate foodie map and taste your way through the restaurants featured on your favorite food TV shows, bite, sip, and savor your way across Connecticut, where every stop is a star on the menu. There are over 60 restaurants to visit across CT, featured on shows like Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Chopped, Best Thing I Ever Ate, and more. You can find more info about the places on the list at CTvisit.com. And back to the sweet stuff. Next on the list is grassroots ice cream in Granby, Simsbury, and New Milford. Full disclosure, grassroots was my personal initiation into OS. I'll drive 25 minutes for a scoop. It may not be the originator of quirky flavors, but you know any place with goat cheese blackberry as a standard flavor in the rotation is going to push the flavor envelope a bit. It takes some pretty inventive concepts to push the classics like chocolate chip and strawberry to second fiddle, but subtle twists, blood orange chocolate chip, yes please, and absolute left turns, geranium, have led to three locations. The original and Granby, as well as newer spots in Simsbury and New Milford. And then there are some places where it's not the flavors that make you stop and look. It's the process. Zero Degrees in West Hartford and Middletown brings Thai-style rolled ice cream to Connecticut, letting you watch the confection come together in front of your eyes, as the batter and your chosen mixin spread out over a freezing pan and get chopped together and rolled into a unique but distinctly ice cream treat. It's a fun experience, and my daughter's a big fan. But of course, not every frozen treat in Connecticut is about classic dairy ice cream. If you're looking for something a little different, whether that means fully vegan or just a lighter alternative on a hot day, the state still delivers sweet satisfaction with a few places that prove the frozen dessert story here is bigger than one style. If you want proof that dairy-free dessert can absolutely be the main event, start with Via Lactia in New Haven. This is a fully vegan frozen dessert shop that doesn't treat plant-based as a compromise. The menu gives you rich, creative frozen treats without leaning on the usual, well, at least it's sorbet energy, and that matters. Whether you're vegan, dairy-free, or just the kind of person who likes seeing what's possible when desserts get a little imaginative, The Lactea makes the case beautifully. If you need a little old world in your dessert, but aren't quite ready to grab a hold tiramisu, Noci Gelato, with locations in Weathersfield and Glastonbury, brings exactly the right energy. It has this smooth, elegant Italian-style dessert feel. If you've never tried it, Gelato has its own texture and personality. Denser, silkier, and somehow more intense than standard ice cream. This is the kind of place where you can slow down, pick a flavor, and suddenly your whole day feels more put together. We started with a couple ice cream institutions with century plus histories. So let's talk about another spot that's coming up on a centennial of its own. The Keto's Italian Ice in Middletown and Old Lime is an old school institution in every way. Bright, simple, refreshing, and deeply tied to the Connecticut summer experience, with their location in Old Lyme only a few years younger. It doesn't need a lot of explanation because the legacy does the work for it. They're open for summer and only summer. The scoops are in classic squeezable paper cups that don't even need a spoon. The Kitos is the kind of place that reminds you some frozen treats become institutions because they keep showing up for people, summer after summer, and never lose the thing that made them special in the first place. Before we say goodbye, we need to end on a delicious high note: Ferris Acres Creamery in Newtown, which was named the number one ice cream shop in the entire country by the food review app Belly. That title isn't just marketing fluff. It comes from more than 100 million user ratings, which means a truly alarming number of people have done the hard work of taste testing on your behalf. Ferris Acres sits on a working dairy farm on Sugar Street. They've been scooping since 2003, making ice cream on site using family recipes, and the menu has that perfect balance between your inner child is happy and your influencer friend is texting aesthetic photos to the group chat. Sure, you can go classic with black raspberry or peppermint, but you can also explore the more creative side with flavors like bada bing, an almond and chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate chunks and bing cherries, or catch-rotating specials like Elvis Dream, which of course is banana, PB, and chocolate chunks in a vanilla base. Alright, friends and neighbors, it's time to wrap up our little tour of Connecticut's ice cream universe. We've gone from campus to farm stands, from drawbridges and boardwalks to tiny main street shops and modern micro creameries. And the thing that jumps out to me, with all these spots spread across the state and so many more we didn't even mention, is this. Ice cream is never just ice cream. It's road trips, traditions, first jobs, date nights, post-game rituals, and a whole lot of love poured into something that melts if you don't eat it fast enough. And maybe some hot fudge to top it off. Build your own ice cream trail. Maybe your trail is just three places within 20 minutes of my house over the course of two weekends. Maybe it's a place from today's episode you haven't tried yet that you put on your calendar for next month. Maybe it's a side quest alongside a museum or a reward after a long hike. You can go solo or with friends and family. And I can't wait to see the scoops you try. So here's your call to action. Try a new spot. Revisit an old favorite. Tell the person behind the counter that you appreciate what they do. And share your own ice cream adventures on social media and tag us. I'm your host, Amanda LG. Thanks for joining me on this very sweet edition of Perts and Recreation. And by the way, my favorite flavor of ice cream is, of course, Pearl Grey. Now go find your next adventure. I have a feeling it might come with sprinkles.