It’s January and I’ve been absent for a while. In spite of the Holidays I didn’t eat as badly as I wanted. More ice cream than normal. But what’s normal?
Actually, my wife and I went on an ice cream tour of Princeton, NJ. And well met it was, indeed! There is plenty of ice cream to be had in quaint downtown Princeton.
The first stop was The Bent Spoon. The Bent Spoon is right inside Palmer’s Square and serves some very unique and well crafted gelato styled ice creams as well as sorbet. I usually mix a scoop of their vanilla with blood orange sorbet. It’s as good as you imagine. This go around I got eggnog, a flavor which New York City’s Van Leeuwen overwhelms me with a delightful blast of nutmeg. Not so much nutmeg in TBS’s eggnog as the spicy twang of rum. In fact, so much rum hit my nose it seemed like I was eating a shot glass! But then again, I’m not a rum person. The rum cake I got in the Bahamas overwhelmed me. That being said I’m sure the single malt sipping aristocrats that inhabit the neighborhood surround one of the nation’s premiere Ivy League schools would have reveled in it’s oaky bouquet. It is oaky, right? That’s the kind of wood this whiskey is stored in? For a Kentucky boy I know precious little about it!
I have to say, TBS was a traditional stop for me. But my taste for it has waned as of late. I can’t put my finger on it.
Next stop, world famous Thomas Sweets! It’s world famous as Albert Einstein’s favorite ice cream. Well, not exactly. I was told this once but TS was founded in 1979 and Einstein died in 1955. Of course, with his work on Relativity he could have traveled to the future and had it. Turns out the picture on the wall of Einstein licking ice cream is just that. Einstein licking anonymous unbranded ice cream. That isn’t to say TS doesn’t have good ice cream. This is another traditional stop for me and anyone else who frequents Princeton. This place will mix any candy bar or cookie into a mash of diabetic coma inducing sugar bomb of awesome. Just order any of their various flavors and choose among their large array of crumbled sweet confections. They toss it into a giant industrial mixer and Zappho! You’ll never be the same.
Last stop, The Halo Pub. This is a curious establishment to me. I wouldn’t have even approached the place had my wife not told of some vague legend of ice cream from this storefront. It looks exactly as advertised. A pub. In the front is a small sign with a crude painting of ice cream. But once you get inside you find a dizzying selection of hard ice cream as you would never have imagined. At the ready is usually a lone weary and bedraggled scooper with one huge arm failing to service the small line of people ordering ice cream, coffee, and attempting to pay for ice cream or coffee. Once you get the ice cream you realize THP is one of Princeton’s best kept secrets. The milk is from a local farm, the ice cream is just sweet enough without overwhelming the other ingredients. The pub quickly overtook TBS as my favorite ice cream joint.
I had vanilla and pistachio.
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