Ice Cream Offerings at the Mall of America

The Mall of America is a large mall located in the 'burbs south of Minneapolis proper.  According to Wikipedia, the mall of America was the second-largest mall in terms of area and largest in terms of number of stores in America when it opened in 2003.  Until yesterday, I had successfully avoided Mall of America, but Kyle, l'boyfriend, was insistent that we go.

The mall itself was totally weird.  On the first floor, there is an amusement park, Nickelodeon Universe, with roller coasters and everything.  The lego store, which had humongous lego sculptures was pretty cool, and there was an American Girl store which I would have obsessed over as a child.  Other than that it was just ... a mall.  A huge, poorly lit mall with unfinished, cement floors.

Of course I took note of many of the ice cream places in the mall.  The first one I was wan Haagen-Dazs.  I got really excited about this, because the last time I went to a Haagen-Dazs scoop shop was when I was probably about 9 visiting my grandparents in Syracuse, NY.  I remember the scoop shop having so many flavors.  This Haagen-Dazs was disappointing.  It had 5 or 6 of Haagen-Dazs most common/boring/appealing to the masses flavors.  I was really hoping for something exciting, so I did not get anything here.

Next I saw that Godiva now serves soft-serve ice cream made with their Belgian chocolate.  I also passed on this however.  I have nothing against soft-serve ice cream itself, I think it is delicious, but soft-serve machines kind of skeeve me out.  Who knows how clean (or not!) those machines are.  Ick.  I wasn't quite at the necessary level of desperation to try this out.

Next I saw a fro-yo and ice cream place, Freshens.  Again, the flavors were nothing to write home about so I passed.  What was cool here was that they had a crepe bar where they would wrap a thick crepe like a giant cone and fill it with whatever you wanted.  If I hadn't already eaten lunch I would have considered getting one.

I finally ended up getting dessert at Paciugo Gelato.  They had tons of interesting flavor options.  I think the employee thought my, uh, enthusiasm about ice cream was hilarious.  Paciugo offers three sizes: Piccolo - you can try up to three flavors, Medio - up to 4 flavors, and Grande - up to 5 flavors.  Kyle and I opted to share a Piccolo.  I was initially hesitant, as the cup seemed tiny, but I was pleasantly surprised.  They really packed the ice cream in there.

For our three flavors we chose Ginger Cookie, Cheesecake Chocolate Turtle, and Mocha.  The Ginger Cookie was the standout of the bunch.  It tasted just like a ginger snap and had big chunks of ginger snap in there.  The other two flavors weren't bad, but I didn't really like their texture.  They felt over-frozen.  Some of the flavors were milk-based instead of cream-based and I think the Turtle and Mocha may have been milk based.  I sampled an amazing flavor called Vanilla Ale, which Kyle hated.  He seemed to think that alcohol and ice cream shouldn't mix.  He is wrong.