Grand Ole Creamery

I admit it. What can I say? I use blind dating as a foil for checking out new places. If the date is going to be a dud, the adventure may as well not be!

In the world of dating, there are rules. Well, guidelines, not actually "rules" like that one author got rich off of last decade. Basically, on a blind date, make sure you have the option to get in and out quickly. I am sure that there plenty of you out there that have had horrendous blind dates and are nodding in agreement. This guideline means that many of my dates don't end up on this blog because you probably could care less about the one glass of pinot grigio I drank with a random man sitting outside at the View. I would rather forget most of them too.

But there is one food item that works well for blind dates: ice cream. It melts. Fast. Obviously, this trick only works well in the summer because in the winter, ice cream would imply freezing which might lead to cuddling way too fast.

Last summer, I whirlwinded around Minneapolis eating ice cream. But I didn't hit more than Izzy's in St. Paul so I used a St. Paul blind date to try out Grand Ole Creamery, recently awarded top marks by Heavy Table for their Sweet Cream flavor.

I met my date outside and we headed in, where suddenly the pressure was on... I had to pick a flavor! Delay tactic: I asked for a sample of the Sweet Cream knowing I just had to taste it even though I wasn't going to order it. Very mild, unexciting. Oops, pressure is back and small children are stepping on my heels. Indecisiveness only stays cute to Blind Date for so long. "Chocolate Fudge Brownie", I screamed out in an unreasoned decision. "In a waffle cone".

Wow! That is a lot of ice cream. Good thing I worked through lunch and was easily able to eat the whole thing. Oh wait, darn, I probably looked like a pig. Oh well. But it was legitimate to eat the whole thing because I was hungry AND I really liked the ice cream! It was smooth and creamy, right in the middle of perfect, not icy or buttery at all. The ice cream base was a smooth milk chocolate and had a perfect amount of large brownie pieces in it. It was ice cream with brownies, not the other way around, like Ben & Jerry's often is. The brownie pieces also had a bit of extra sweetness from either maraschino or amaretto that I thought added to the flavor as well. The waffle cone was crisp, light and crunchy good. I was delighted by the malt ball at the bottom of it!

Grand Ole Creamery just made it to the near top of my Twin Cities ice cream list, alongside Sebastian Joe's.

As to the man, perhaps it is indicative that I am waxing poetic over the ice cream and not much else.

Thumbs Up: Great consistency, yummy brownie pieces
Thumbs Down: Not that I could figure out

Grand Ole Creamery 750 Grand Ave St. Paul www.grandolecreamery.com