If you know me, you know that I LIVE for an adventure. It can be monotonous activity such as getting groceries, but if we can somehow spin it into an adventure…I’m in. So you can imagine my delight when I park on a random street in the East Village and see a sign that says, “Village Ice Cream, this way”…I followed, and another block see another sign, and on and on. Seriously I followed the street signs for 3 blocks and when I entered the fantastic and charming little store announced, “I followed the signs!!!”
Village Ice Cream is a new little boutique creamery located essentially in a parking lot at the end of the East Village. 10th Ave and 3rd St SE Calgary. It is owned by Billy, and his icecream scooper extraordinare, Bailey, gave me a serious tour that included tasting all 15 flavors of ice cream.
It really is the best ice cream I’ve ever had. That’s a pretty big statement right? Billy taught me all about High Fat/Low Sugar ice cream, which is exactly the opposite of what one may think is a)healthy, or b)yummy. Not true. This ice cream is rich before sweet and the details and subtleties of the flavors are evident. Billy was telling me that dairy is the expensive part of ice cream, so manufacturers in commercial ice cream are continually decreasing the amount of dairy fat and instead are filling it with all sorts of non-food things we shouldn’t be consuming: polysorbate, monodiglycerides…gross stuff. Billy uses recipes that are 100 years old and only the finest ingredients (organic pecans from California, he knows the grower personally), coffee beans from our very own Phil and Sebastian, etc.
Personally, I LOVED the Huckleberry and the Toasted Coconut is ridiculous. The Salted Caramel is their big hit and they have a couple of summer features I need to go back and try: Spiced Banana and Bourbon Maple Pecan.
Check. It. Out. Tell them Fig and Fennel says hi!