Adam & Eats: Sip n Dipity

Editor’s note: Adam Brandt is a graduate from the Cobra Kai School of Culinary Callousness, where he received their highest award, the Red Apron of Merciless Eating. Aside from eating and talking about eating, he makes pots, paintings, prints, books, photographs, and generally, a big mess. He has been the studio assistant at Mudpuppy Pottery for almost nine years and is attending a local university in a desperate attempt to earn a biology degree.

If you don’t take last week into consideration, it has been pretty warm here lately. Warm weather means only one thing: you won’t get stared at like a crazy person for eating ice cream.

Recently I got an email from a friend, who got an email from a friend, informing friend number one that the owners of our local Marble Slab chose not to renew their franchise agreement, but instead chose to re-open as an independent store. That’s good news for you, because now your hard earned dollars spent there will not be going off to some unseen corporation, but instead they will stay right here in our local economy. It is also good news for me, because I get to go eat ice cream and write about it.

Located at the far eastern end of Rogers Avenue, in what was until recently the Marble Slab, is the new home of Sip n Dipity. Yes, the name is silly, I know, but that’s what it’s called.

The good news is they remodeled a little bit and the place feels even more like a hometown ice cream parlor, except for the flat-screen televisions that are the new menus. Everything else has either stayed the same or improved.

I have heard from various sources that the employees are rude and apathetic, but they were excellent when I was there last. Maybe it was because the boss was there. Perhaps it is like that thing they say about mice playing when the cat is doing paperwork or something. Whatever the case and whatever my source’s experiences were, the few times that I’ve been there, the employees were helpful and friendly. Even to me, who can take up to 30 minutes to decide what I want to order.

What about the ice cream, you ask? Well, all of the ice cream is made fresh in house, the cookies are whipped up in the back, and every malt and milkshake is made to order. They still have an “ice-cold piece of stone” on which they blend toppings into your ice cream.

You still offer a plethora of ways to eat your ice cream. I’ll leave it up to you Math nerds out there to figure out how many different combinations you could possibly make given 8 different kinds of containers (cones and bowls), 22 flavors of ice cream, and 26 different toppings. I, being kind of a nerd myself, came up with what can only be described as a metric crap load of different ways to get your ice cream. If anyone actually calculates the number of possibilities, feel free to email me your findings.

Anyways, all of that Math aside, they offer some excellent choices. If I were to recommend flavors, I’d have to say the double dark chocolate is one of the best they’ve got. The rum ice cream would be spectacular in a Coke float. Also, their plain-ol’ vanilla is top notch, as well.

So, the long and short of it is that they still make really excellent ice cream. Is it the best ice cream ever? No. Is it really delicious? Yes. Is it worth paying a pretty penny for? That’s up to you to decide. Just remember that it is up to us, as members of the community, to keep local businesses alive. What better way is there to support your local economy than to eat ice cream?

Until next week, good eating to you and yours.

Feedback
When he’s not beating his eggs, Adam makes time to respond to e-mails that get past his hard-ass spam filter. You can try to reach him at [email protected]

Adam also has this thing called Sandwich Control.