Just about the time flowers start to open along the roadways of Vermont the ice creams stands are opening too. We decided to check into some of the kingdom's newest ice cream shops: Chappy's in East Burke, Vermont, The Pizza Man in Lyndonville and The Bagel Depot in Saint Johnsbury. I needed a crack research squad for the job...and they seemed oddly keen to go to work on this particular assignment.
We hit Chappy's first. Set beside a brook with a view of a tiny dam, the location alone was worth the trip. Chappy's has great atmosphere...it's clean and well appointed with lots of topping choices and napkins (we're gonna need some of those). Sitting by the brook and eating ice cream on a hot summer day is about as close to heaven as a kid can get. What did the experts think about the ice cream? We tried the soft serve flavor burst and all agreed it is good, very good. It is very fresh tasting ice cream to start with and the colorful swirl that runs along the edge is packed with flavor. I think "awesome" is the technical term.
Next we visited the Pizza Man in Lyndonville.
Very conveniently located on Route 5 and family run, this ice cream stand has a lot going for it. It has lots of seating, also a lot of napkins (good),and holy guacamole is that a small?? The servings are humongous!
The experts took their time on this one. One can't be expected to rush research as delicate as this. They all agreed, the Gifford's cookie dough is to die for and the soft serve is rich and flavorful.
Finally we visited The Bagel Depot's New Stand at the corner of Railroad and Memorial in Saint Johnsbury which boasts 50 flavors of soft serve.
At first we were skeptical...that is a lot of soft serve flavors but how they do it is ingenious. They add the flavor to a vanilla base and whip it up together. It gets extruded twice so it's very creamy.
The critics liked the pina colada flavor soft serve and the fruity sorbet hard ice cream got raves. I went for nice hot cup of excellent coffee. The Bagel Depot is in an old creamery building and has nice bistro seating outside in a very good location to watch the world go by.
Ice cream stands are a great metaphor for summer in Vermont...so very sweet, a simple pleasure, and, like the ice cream they dish up, gone much too quickly. So, don't let the summer speed by without taking the time to sit by a brook or a road and savor your share of summers sweetness at one of these shops. And our research? In the end, the critics were pleased with all three ice cream stands...they made this hot summer day just a little sweeter.
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