ice cream in south portland

i don't eat all that much ice cream.  its not that i don't like it, i'm an american for fuck's sake.  but after many years of suffering, i finally admitted to myself that i am lactose intolerant.  ice cream is not only made with milk but they add lactose to it to make it have that creamy mouth feel so its a double whammy on the belly of us lactose intolerant folks.  but how can i be a whole person without a little ice cream in the summer?

so for this month's blog-o-rama project i elected to try willard scoop in south portland's willard square (there was some mild drama involved with this choice, it ends up i don't know how to use the 'send all' email function).  this was an exciting choice on multiple fronts.  number 1: we just bought and moved into our first house in south portland, and while we didn't manage to score a home in the coveted willard beach neighborhood, we are a short walk from said neighborhood.  number 2 relates back directly to number 1, willard square is so f-ing cute!

this past friday afternoon, we took a walk to willard square to try out willard scoop.  it has a totally adorable store front and the interior is equally adorable.  as we walked in, and were the only patrons in the little shop, the 2 women behind the counter didn't say hello.  i think this peeve is a marker of truly being a grown up.  but come on, you are just standing behind the counter, we walk DIRECTLY in to your line of view, and you don't greet us with a hello?  and its maine and people are suppose to be friendly in maine!  the young girl who served us was friendly enough taking our orders and did dish out a nice cone of ice cream.

all the ice cream is made on premise, and while they don't have a huge selection, they have a nice selection.  all your typical flavors and then some more interesting ones thrown in like blue berry and salted caramel.  a small scoop is $3.50 and if you want a waffle cone it's 50 cents extra on any size.

one of my other weird things with ice cream is that i don't like i lot of shit in it.  call me a purist but i really just want to taste the ice cream and not nuts or brownie or ribbons of fudge or potato chips.  i think this stems from my dad.  he eats ice cream EVERY night!  sadly he is not the happiest guy and i think his ice cream is likely one of the few things he finds pleasure in.  if he could, i think he would have vanilla hagen dazs every night.  don't buy him a pint of ben and jerry's or he might throw it at your head.

my favorite flavor of ice cream is coffee.   at willard scoop their rendition is 'dark roasted coffee' and it was delicious!  i got it on a sugar cone, which was the freshest cone i have ever eaten (i didn't ask if they make them there but they do make their waffle cones) and it didn't have any paper wrapped around it so you don't have to worry you are eating glue with your ice cream.  the ice cream was dense and creamy and very coffee-y!  pretty much a perfect cone of ice cream in my book.

seth got thin mint in a waffle cone -- think chocolate ice cream with girl scout thin mints mixed in.  and, as always, he elected to top it with jimmys.  willard scoop only has chocolate jimmys and seth wanted me to mention this as a bone of contention, he likes rainbow.  but really i don't care because i hate jimmys!  they are little waxy bits that don't taste like anything but sugar and they get stuck in my teeth and yuck. incidentally, jimmys are typically called sprinkles on the west coast.  i grew up calling them jimmys but that is probably due to the influence of my east coast born parents.  since initially writing this my frined katie who is also from california, said she called them jimmys as a kid.  maybe there is no east coast-west coast jimmy-sprinkle rivalry. 

once seth had licked off all the jimmys i did try his thin mint ice cream.  the texture was just as good as mine, creamy and dense, but the flavor wasn't as good.  it was actually a little difficult to tell what the flavor of the ice cream was: was it chocolate?  well then it didn't have a very strong chocolate flavor.  was it suppose to be minty?  then it failed completely there.  seth wanted something minty, and when he got chuncks of the cookie there was that taste of mint.  but otherwise it was not the perfect cone of ice cream.

willard scoop is  a great spot to go for a cone this summer.  there are picnic tables in the empty lot next door as well as couple seats right out front.  the square itself is great for people and dog watching.  a very enjoyable place to have a sweet summer treat.