See the mercury on the thermometer rising? First, it hit the 80-degree mark and now it just keeps climbing.
When it heats up, no matter what flavor is your favorite, there is a cold frozen treat that can take the edge off summer’s dog days.
July is National Ice Cream Month and rising prices don’t seem to make a dent in the dessert’s popularity when the sun starts blazing. There are plenty of local ice cream shops dishing out bowls and cups full of instant refreshment.
Favored flavors revealed
Everyone has different tastes with ice cream and it’s not limited to flavor. Some prefer it in a cup, some in a cone. Some like it with toppings that could range from sprinkles to walnuts to butterscotch sauce. Some skip the ice cream all together and go for frozen smoothies or traditional ices.
Hoboken resident Ranier Martini is more of a coffee person, but he has a particular soft spot for Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.
“I’m normally not an ice cream fan,” says Martini, who only indulges the craving “mostly when it gets too hot.” Hobokenite Jim Supplee prefers pistachio or vanilla fudge, which he usually gets from the supermarket. But he’s a social ice cream aficionado. “I join my wife when she wants ice cream.”
Marc Snyder, who was visiting from St. Louis, Mo., confesses that he has always loved raspberry or black raspberry.
Also visiting from St. Louis was Margaret Bauer, who says, “I just like cookies and cream.”
Snyder and Bauer’s friend, Alisa Brennan, from Hoboken, likes to frequent Frozen Monkey Cafe, 526 Washington St., where she always gets the chocolate vanilla swirl.
Stevens student Michael Stross, of Paramus, was enjoying a vanilla ice cream with crunch on top at the Frozen Monkey, which speaks to his overall favorite, cookies and cream.
Former ice cream shop employee Ellyn Griggs, of Hillsborough, who’s doing research at Stevens, got a vanilla Tasti D-Lite at the cafe. Otherwise, butter batter is her favorite flavor.
Lisa Sanes got a low-fat wild black cherry Misto shake at Rita’s, 121 Washington St. in Hoboken. She gets the craving when the weather’s warm.
Meanwhile, 7-year-old twins Olivia and Aidan Halstead enjoyed some Ben & Jerry’s from their shop at 405 Washington St., Hoboken, and both are sweet on cookie dough. Olivia is big on vanilla ice cream with sprinkles – the rainbow and chocolate combo – and like mom Caroline, she loves lemon sorbet.
Mom says Olivia would eat ice cream 365 days a week if she let her.
Olivia added, “I enjoy it like every day of the earth.”
Local ice cream shop specialties
Locals can choose how they celebrate ice cream season in a variety of places.
“July is a big month – July and August; once it’s over 70 degrees, every day it’s nonstop,” explains Stacy Ghelesnik, owner of the Frozen Monkey. “We serve Tasti D-Lite here, which is a low-fat, low-calorie [80 to 100 calories in a small cup], natural frozen dessert.”
Ghelesnik says the shop offers over 100 flavors with vanilla and chocolate every day and the other two flavors of the day change every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They also have frozen chai drinks.
“Our most popular flavors are peanut butter, by far, Oreo, green tea … Right now, we have butter crunch mania, which is a Butterfinger flavor. Any of the candy flavors are always really popular. We also offer a lot of frozen drinks. Most famous is the Frozen Monkey – it’s vanilla Tasti D-Lite blended with half of a fresh banana and iced coffee, which is fantastic and much lower in calories than a frappaccino.”
Nefty Arzola, day manager at Hoboken’s Ben & Jerry’s, says, “A lot of the kids like simple stuff like cookies and cream and they like vanilla, chocolate. The older kids, they like cake batter, brownie cheesecake, Imagine Whirled Peace, which is inspired by John Lennon. A lot of college kids get shakes, like chocolate therapy is pretty popular.”
Arzola says his personal favorite is Imagine Whirled Peace, which is caramel-sweetened ice cream with swirled pieces of fudge and toffee cookie.
Laila Hammad, of Hoboken, who is co-owner of Rita’s with her brother Shereef, personally digs cookies and cream and strawberry, and she says their most popular item is the mango-vanilla gelato, which is mango and vanilla custard layered. Rita’s popular Italian ices include the in-demand mango, cherry, and wild black cherry.
West New York resident Eneida Torres is assistant manager at Cold Stone Creamery, 116 Washington St. in Hoboken, says that coffee, cake batter, and sweet cream are big with adult customers and cotton candy is biggest with the kids. They also offer frozen drinks and smoothies, the most popular of which is Cake and Shake for shakes (cake batter ice cream and yellow cake with milk and sweet cream) and strawberry mango for the smoothies. Though, her personal favorites are coconut and traditional vanilla.
She says that every night at 7 p.m., the lines are out the door, but says it’s mostly couples.
“It’s mostly a date spot, it’s really nice,” says Torres, who says that many of them start entire conversations over the personalized ingredients.
Ice is nice
But some find ice cream too sweet or too heavy. So why not try a simple ice treat that’s packed with lots of flavor?
At the Ice Hut in Hoboken, manager Ashley Lovelace says the most popular ice flavors include peanut butter, chocolate, lemon, and mango. They have vanilla and chocolate ice cream, but all their products are fat free, and vanilla seems to be winning the ice cream flavor war between the two.
Lovelace says that they see the most amount of customers at night when everyone’s coming out of the bars, and her favorite ice cream is vanilla while her favorite ice is chocolate.
Lovelace added that she definitely prefer ice to ice cream, believing it’s better for the long, hot summer, explaining, “The ice cream is too heavy, and the ice is more refreshing.”
Comments can be sent to Mpaul@hudsonreporter.com.