Carvel Ice Cream

One of the articles in this morning's Chronicle tells of the opening of a Carvel Ice Cream store in downtown Houston. Anyone who has grown up in New York will know Carvel, which (in a Yankee's opinion) is much better than the southern equivalent-- "Dairy Queen."

We have Dairy Queens in many of the towns close to Clear Lake, and in all the years that we've lived here, I've tried DQ (as the locals call it) about two or three times. Each tasting never had me wishing for more. I guess I just expect soft-serve swirled ice cream to taste like Carvel, and the only thing that's going to taste like Carvel is going to be Carvel.

When I was a kid, we lived in Woodhaven, Queens, and the closest Carvel store was just a short bicycle-ride away (four streets). One of those streets was busy Atlantic Avenue, so I was never allowed to go alone or with friends. If a bicycle was going to be taken up to Carvel, then my dad led the way on his bike, and we always walked our bikes across Atlantic rather than riding them across the six-lane avenue. (In my mind's eye, I'm seeing 6 lanes, and I think that's the way it was, and still is now.)

Carvel never tried to out-flavor any other ice cream company. Their selections were vanilla, chocolate, strawberry. Period. In most Carvel stores, they had a machine that would give you a swirled combination of both vanilla and chocolate. Their cones were simple sugar-cake cones, in sizes of small and large. I seem to remember a cone that had two "tops" to it, so you could get two individual swirls of two different flavors.

They also offered sprinkles.... chocolate ones, or rainbow-colored ones. This "blog" is named after those Carvel sprinkles, as was the newsletter I wrote before joining the blog-craze. The newsletter was named "Sprinkles" because it was filled with a little of this, a little of that, stories and short articles written in no particular order. Just like this blog.... so I thought the name "Sprinkles" would work out just fine here also.

The trips to Carvel for me and my dad are stamped into my memory as if they happened just yesterday. We'd ride our bikes up there either after dinner on a summer's evening, or on a Saturday afternoon (post-lunch, pre-dinner). I would always order a chocolate cone with chocolate sprinkles, my father would order a vanilla cone, no sprinkles. My dad was (and still is) a purist with ice cream. He likes vanilla. Period. No sprinkles. No nuts. "No nothing." I can hear him now--- "If I want nuts, I'll eat nuts. But not with my ice cream."

We would both get small-sized cones.... small for me, because that's all I could handle, and because my Aunt Dolly was always telling me that "A lady should order a small of anything, except a house or a diamond." My dad always got a small-sized cone because, as he always said: "I have to watch my waist-line or I won't fit into my Army uniform, and the way the world is, you never know if you'll have to wear it again." (Our bike-riding-to-Carvel days were in the 1950s.) To this day, I would bet that my dad could button up his Army jacket.

My father and I would sit at one of the small tables outside the Carvel store and eat our ice cream. My father ate his cone faster than I ate mine, and he would keeping asking me "Want to trade?"-- offering me his quickly-shrinking vanilla cone for my slowly-eaten chocolate cone. My answer, of course, was always no. I was not then, and I'm not now, a vanilla girl. Still today, if I don't have chocolate ice cream, then I don't feel the need to splurge on the calories for another flavor.

When my dad came down to Texas in 1997, he felt like having some ice cream one afternoon. He asked me to drive him to Carvel.

"We don't have Carvel here, daddy.... we have Dairy Queen."

"If I wanted milk, I'd go to a dairy..... where do you go for ice cream around here?"

"There's a yogurt shop right near here... the best chocolate and vanilla yogurt around. It's called TCBY, and yogurt is healthier for you than ice cream anyway."

"T-C-what??? I want real ice cream, not yogurt. I'm 78 years old... how healthy do you want me to be at my age?"

We ended up going to TCBY for the yogurt anyway, since I was the one driving. And at the time, that was the best "ice cream" around here. My father ordered a small vanilla cone, I ordered the chocolate. He ate it all, and he said it was "Okay, but if this place was next to a Carvel, then T-C-whatever-this-is would be out of business in less than a day."

So now, Carvel has come to Houston. Downtown Houston, that is, which is an hour's drive away. I'm tempted to drive all the way down there for a chocolate cone, but I may just wait. I have a feeling that the chocolate Carvel that I remember from the 1950s is not going to be the chocolate Carvel of 2005. Maybe the next time my husband and I are in the downtown area, we'll search out the Carvel and give it a try. Still......... no bicycles crossing Atlantic Avenue, no daddy asking "Want to trade?" ..... no matter how good the ice cream could be, it just isn't going to be the same.