SteelTown
Jul 27, 2008, 7:40 PM
Steel Town Scoop
It's summertime and the eating is easy in Hamilton, the ice-cream capital of Canada
Amy Rosen , National Post
Published: Saturday, July 26, 2008
She smiles broadly while handing me the little white taster spoon. I size up the sample, briefly taking in its pleasingly pale yellow colour and its bolder yellow swirls, before slowly slipping it past my lips. My eyes widen. The corners of my mouth curl towards the sky. It has finally happened.
I've eaten ice cream in Zurich -- big, dreamy scoops tossed into still-warm waffle cones. I've eaten gelato in Florence -- from rosewater to pistachio, sometimes five flavours at a time, sometimes seven times in a day. I've even enjoyed a few licks of organic Welsh ice cream on the picturesque bridge overlooking the River Dee in Llangollen. But it wasn't until this moment, in Alanna Minuk's Room for Dessert in Dundas, Ont., that I finally tasted the best ice cream I have ever had.
It was Minuk's lemon meringue, made from a fresh, buttery curd swirled into dense homemade 17% milk fat vanilla along with lots of real lemon juice and zest. While its flavour was beautiful, what really killed me was the texture: so smooth, it was the ice-cream equivalent to listening to Barry White while rolling around in satin sheets with a summer breeze blowing though an open window.
This got me thinking. Ice cream is a kind of magic. It's the Wonder Twins of the culinary world, having the ability to take on the form of scoop or stick, thick beverage or creamy cake. It goes from liquid to solid, and then back to liquid again with barely a moment's notice. And the best part is, during summer you're allowed to eat as much of it as you want. That's because summertime means ice cream. And no place means ice cream more than Hamilton -- the ice-cream capital of Canada.
Hamilton and Dundas not only have great tasting ice cream on offer, they've also got an unparalleled ice-cream history. There's Hewitt's Dairy Bar, a 1962 offshoot of James Hewitt's 1887 family dairy. This old-style soda fountain, with its wraparound linoleum counter, hasn't changed much since the 1960s, nor have the surrounding cornfields. Then there's the Westfield Heritage Village, which rolls back the clock even further to a time of horse-drawn wagons and bowler hats. The Village will celebrate a historic ice-cream timeline that stretches from 1790 to 1920 at the fourth annual Westfield Ice Cream Festival, which runs Aug. 3 and 4.
But returning to a more recent incarnation of the dairy treat, amidst walls painted in hues of chocolate sauce and lime, Alanna Minuk explains her ice cream philosophy to me: "Because we're a bake shop, a lot of our products get put into the ice cream, like strawberry rhubarb pie, cheesecake, cookie dough ? so we can make any sort of concoction," she says. "If you're going to indulge, go all the way." I take that as an invitation to try every one of the 10 varieties (from a rotating roster of 50) on offer today. I try sponge toffee, which Minuk says Bonnie Stern loved (me, too). I take some licks of mocha almond fudge swirled with a homemade ganache. The strawberry is redolent of summer fields. Even plain old vanilla is astounding. I bite, I lick, I drip and then I lick some more. Then I get one more scoop of the lemon meringue before I head out the door.
It's 20 minutes later and I'm wearing a white lab coat, hair net, rubber gloves and slipper-type things to cover my shoes. Swirls of dry-ice smoke curl around my ankles as I march down a long corridor. And that's when I skid on a chunk of chocolate brownie. "Could this day get any better?" I think as I continue walking towards Stoney Creek Dairy's main production floor. Steve Hunt, the plant manager, is leading me around. He says the brownie chunk I slipped on is part of the Chocolate Brownie Ripple they're running today.
What started in George Dawson's garage at the back of his King Street home in 1929 has turned into a niche ice-cream production plant. Stoney Creek produces for Metro, which includes the A&P group of grocery stores in Ontario and the Metro chain in Quebec, as well as President's Choice gelatos and organics; they also work with smaller, entrepreneurial groups to produce everything from soy-based to high-protein frozen treats. The plant is fairly small in relation to the big dairies, such as Breyers and Nestle. Explains Hunt, "We're smaller and more flexible." Even so, "Vanilla is still No. 1," he says. "You can have 50 flavours and vanilla will be half of it. And if you have two flavours, vanilla will still be half."
I end the day at the most famous example of Hamilton's ice cream culture, Hutch's, which is attached to the Stoney Creek Dairy. Even though it's been here for 80 years, it doesn't look a day over 50. Cindy Frick, Hutch's current owner, is amazed by its ongoing popularity: "I can't believe that people can eat this much ice cream," she says. I take that as a personal challenge. And so I try the chocolate fudge variety I saw them making in the plant. And then I try mint chocolate chip, Frick's favourite. Then it's on to the chocolate peanut butter, because that's my favourite. After that, I covet a teenager's chocolate sundae, and then I ask his girlfriend if I can take a picture of her banana split, just so I can get a little closer to it. A bus of seniors pulls up and I overhear one scooper say to the other, "Uh-oh, better get out some more maple walnut." And then, even though I've eaten the equivalent of 14 scoops of ice cream today, I order a chocolate milkshake for the road.
It is summertime, after all.
It's summertime and the eating is easy in Hamilton, the ice-cream capital of Canada
Amy Rosen , National Post
Published: Saturday, July 26, 2008
She smiles broadly while handing me the little white taster spoon. I size up the sample, briefly taking in its pleasingly pale yellow colour and its bolder yellow swirls, before slowly slipping it past my lips. My eyes widen. The corners of my mouth curl towards the sky. It has finally happened.
I've eaten ice cream in Zurich -- big, dreamy scoops tossed into still-warm waffle cones. I've eaten gelato in Florence -- from rosewater to pistachio, sometimes five flavours at a time, sometimes seven times in a day. I've even enjoyed a few licks of organic Welsh ice cream on the picturesque bridge overlooking the River Dee in Llangollen. But it wasn't until this moment, in Alanna Minuk's Room for Dessert in Dundas, Ont., that I finally tasted the best ice cream I have ever had.
It was Minuk's lemon meringue, made from a fresh, buttery curd swirled into dense homemade 17% milk fat vanilla along with lots of real lemon juice and zest. While its flavour was beautiful, what really killed me was the texture: so smooth, it was the ice-cream equivalent to listening to Barry White while rolling around in satin sheets with a summer breeze blowing though an open window.
This got me thinking. Ice cream is a kind of magic. It's the Wonder Twins of the culinary world, having the ability to take on the form of scoop or stick, thick beverage or creamy cake. It goes from liquid to solid, and then back to liquid again with barely a moment's notice. And the best part is, during summer you're allowed to eat as much of it as you want. That's because summertime means ice cream. And no place means ice cream more than Hamilton -- the ice-cream capital of Canada.
Hamilton and Dundas not only have great tasting ice cream on offer, they've also got an unparalleled ice-cream history. There's Hewitt's Dairy Bar, a 1962 offshoot of James Hewitt's 1887 family dairy. This old-style soda fountain, with its wraparound linoleum counter, hasn't changed much since the 1960s, nor have the surrounding cornfields. Then there's the Westfield Heritage Village, which rolls back the clock even further to a time of horse-drawn wagons and bowler hats. The Village will celebrate a historic ice-cream timeline that stretches from 1790 to 1920 at the fourth annual Westfield Ice Cream Festival, which runs Aug. 3 and 4.
But returning to a more recent incarnation of the dairy treat, amidst walls painted in hues of chocolate sauce and lime, Alanna Minuk explains her ice cream philosophy to me: "Because we're a bake shop, a lot of our products get put into the ice cream, like strawberry rhubarb pie, cheesecake, cookie dough ? so we can make any sort of concoction," she says. "If you're going to indulge, go all the way." I take that as an invitation to try every one of the 10 varieties (from a rotating roster of 50) on offer today. I try sponge toffee, which Minuk says Bonnie Stern loved (me, too). I take some licks of mocha almond fudge swirled with a homemade ganache. The strawberry is redolent of summer fields. Even plain old vanilla is astounding. I bite, I lick, I drip and then I lick some more. Then I get one more scoop of the lemon meringue before I head out the door.
It's 20 minutes later and I'm wearing a white lab coat, hair net, rubber gloves and slipper-type things to cover my shoes. Swirls of dry-ice smoke curl around my ankles as I march down a long corridor. And that's when I skid on a chunk of chocolate brownie. "Could this day get any better?" I think as I continue walking towards Stoney Creek Dairy's main production floor. Steve Hunt, the plant manager, is leading me around. He says the brownie chunk I slipped on is part of the Chocolate Brownie Ripple they're running today.
What started in George Dawson's garage at the back of his King Street home in 1929 has turned into a niche ice-cream production plant. Stoney Creek produces for Metro, which includes the A&P group of grocery stores in Ontario and the Metro chain in Quebec, as well as President's Choice gelatos and organics; they also work with smaller, entrepreneurial groups to produce everything from soy-based to high-protein frozen treats. The plant is fairly small in relation to the big dairies, such as Breyers and Nestle. Explains Hunt, "We're smaller and more flexible." Even so, "Vanilla is still No. 1," he says. "You can have 50 flavours and vanilla will be half of it. And if you have two flavours, vanilla will still be half."
I end the day at the most famous example of Hamilton's ice cream culture, Hutch's, which is attached to the Stoney Creek Dairy. Even though it's been here for 80 years, it doesn't look a day over 50. Cindy Frick, Hutch's current owner, is amazed by its ongoing popularity: "I can't believe that people can eat this much ice cream," she says. I take that as a personal challenge. And so I try the chocolate fudge variety I saw them making in the plant. And then I try mint chocolate chip, Frick's favourite. Then it's on to the chocolate peanut butter, because that's my favourite. After that, I covet a teenager's chocolate sundae, and then I ask his girlfriend if I can take a picture of her banana split, just so I can get a little closer to it. A bus of seniors pulls up and I overhear one scooper say to the other, "Uh-oh, better get out some more maple walnut." And then, even though I've eaten the equivalent of 14 scoops of ice cream today, I order a chocolate milkshake for the road.
It is summertime, after all.
