Gelato Shop and Shakes

We went out to dinner tonight, to Babbo Bruno's....... delicious, as usual. We ordered two of the off-the-menu items...... spinach risotto with scallops and shrimp, and grilled Pacific salmon. I've been on a risotto kick there...... first with acorn squash, then with parmesean cheese, and tonight with spinach. So much on the plate...... I eat less than half of it and bring the rest home.

Being that we were already near the Italian gelato shop, we went there for dessert. It turned out to be dessert for one (me) because my husband decided he wanted to try a different ice cream shop out there near the restaurant. After I had my chocolate and pineapple gelato (half-scoop of each), we drove on to "Shakes," which is a tiny ice cream shop with drive-up and walk-up windows. They serve soft-serve, custard-like ice cream, similar to Dairy Queen (which I don't like) and Carvel (which I loved when I lived in NY).

"Shakes" had three flavors of ice cream..... vanilla, chocolate, and pumpkin-- the last being a seasonal special that's only made for a few months of the year. I don't know if they add a fruit flavor (like strawberry) during the summer months, because tonight was the first time we stopped there. Normally, they just have the vanilla and chocolate, and they'll add any kind of syrup or topping that you can think of, if they happen to have it.

I wasn't going to have ice cream from "Shakes," since I'd had the gelato, but my husband and the man behind the counter got to talking about ice cream flavors and the counter-man started giving us spoonfuls of each flavor.... first the vanilla, then the pumpkin, then the chocolate. And these weren't tiny quarter-teaspoon tastes, these were heaping tablespoons-worth of tastes. Over the top, in a big way.

And all the while that the counter-man is telling us about the ice cream, he's cracking jokes and creating a comedy routine. We stood there at the window laughing with him, enjoying the show, and enjoying the samples of each flavor. My husband ordered a small cup of the pumpkin and the vanilla, and I didn't order anything at all. I explained to the counter-man that we had just had dinner, but I left out the part about me already having gelato.

The counter-man was a scream........ I told my husband that he finally met someone who could come up with one-liners as fast as he could. My husband asked the counter-man if he was the owner of "Shakes" ----we both thought he was, given the way he was talking about the product and the way it's made fresh every day. Turns out that the man works all during the week in a cubicle at one of the local banks. Then he works at "Shakes" on Friday and Saturday nights, "Just for the fun of it."

And fun he had, and so did we. He gave us coupons for free ice cream, telling us to come back when we were really hungry so he could make a bigger sale than $1.90 for two scoops of ice cream.

The custard ice cream, by the way, was delicious...... better than Dairy Queen, and right up there with the Carvel that I remember when I was a kid. Wonderful texture, not too freezing-cold, and the pumpkin tasted just like whipped pumpkin pie.

Three very different ice creams.... Goodies Creamery, Italian Gelato, and now Shakes. They're all delicious, and they're all within a short ride from our house. I know what that means: I'll be doing leg lifts and squats and lunges for the rest of my life.