The Fountain on Locust

Located just East of St. Louis University, The Fountain on Locust is one of my favorite St. Louis restaurants. They boast great food, great ice cream, fun cocktails and ICE CREAM COCKTAILS! Combining ice cream and alcohol is really an amazing and wonderful thing and I don't quite understand why it isn't done more often.

So to continue to describe The Fountain on Locust, which is really tough because there are so many cool things about it. First, the interior is all art-deco-y which is super cool, and has made The Fountain the most photographed restaurant in St. Louis! They also can serve you the world's smallest ice cream cone and world's smallest ice cream sundae. How cool is that?! The only problem is, their ice cream treats are sooo good you would never want to order just a little bit! For one, some of their sundaes are made with Zanzibar chocolate ice cream (which I think I talked about in my Cookie Dough Creations post), which is so unique and amazing. They also make all of the sauces for their sundaes in house! And like I said above, they are know for combining ice cream and alcohol; from ice cream martinis to champaign floats, there is really something for everyone. They even have a lot of amazing sorbet treats, alcoholic and for kiddos, for those who want a sweet cold treat but don't eat dairy! This place is seriously just the best!

The gorgeous interior!

However, one thing about The Fountain has always confused me and maybe even made my stomach turn if I thought about it too much. And just so you know even the possibility of being grossed out by ice cream sends me into serious existential crisis mode. "Who am I?!" "Why am I alive if not to eat ice cream?!" "What is the meaning of it all?!?!?!" (But then again, people my age are wont to have such crises now and then). So of course your curiosity must really be piqued by how ice cream could possibly be gross. Well, according to The Fountain menu, they serve ice cream from Wisconsin's Cedar Crest Dairy and this dairy is the only dairy in the country that ages their ice cream. So I know the finest foods are aged.  Wine, and cheese, and steak.... But honestly aged steak is really gross. Like really gross. They let the steak rot a little bit, so the outside is rotten and the inside isn't. Then they cut away the outside and serve the inside unrotted part. Ew ewwwewww. I know I'm biased because I don't eat meat, but still rotting flesh...barf. But then again, old wine is fabulous. So I just don't really know about this whole aged ice cream bit.

So I went to the Cedar Crest Dairy web page to see what I thought. But they didn't say anything about aging their ice cream. Seems fishy to me. But apparently they were the first ice cream brand to use "tracks" in ice cream. So now we've got one point against Cedar Crest and one point for them. Guess I need to do some more researching. What I've found is that aging ice cream is basically the same as leaving an ice cream base in the fridge overnight before you churn it, if you are making your ice cream at home. Which isn't really gross at all!

But the next question is, what does aging actually do for the ice cream? One blog, Serious Eats I found looked into just that question. Basically, aging ice cream lets you churn the ice cream without making some elaborate and complicated ice bath so you can more easily churn the base into ice cream. Aging your ice cream also allows the fat in the dairy to bind with the eggs so the fat is more evenly distributed, leading to thicker, creamier ice cream. This makes ice cream that doesn't melt as fast and holds air better. When I learned about the differences between gelato and ice cream, I learned it was the higher fat content in ice cream that allows for more air in it. So this makes sense to me so far. However, according to Serious Eats, aging doesn't do anything for the flavor of most ice creams. And when they did a taste test, testers all had different things to say about the texture of aged vs unaged ice cream. All in all, they couldn't really tell. But aging small, homemade batches of ice cream is possibly very different than the large scale that Cedar Crest works on. Maybe on a larger scale, aging would do more. My curiosity isn't really satisfied. I've decided to contact Cedar Crest and ask them what they do to age their ice cream and what it does for the ice cream. As soon as I hear back I'll post here what I've learned!

Now finally to review The Fountain on Locust! I ordered an ice cream martini called The Great Mississippi Mudslide! I couldn't pass it up with a name like that, and the description sounded really good! It is described as Coffee Liqueur, Irish cream, and Vanilla Deluxe ice cream garnished with an Oreo cookie. And they don't put this in the description, but with most of their chocolatey ice cream martini's they coat the inside of the glass with a drizzle of their homemade chocolate sauce! The strongest flavor in this martini was definitely the Irish cream. That and the coffee liqueur overpowered the vanilla flavor of the ice cream. However, the ice cream really added a creamyness and frothyness that was very delicious. There wasn't any hard ice cream, it was all melted, in this martini, and another time I've had one at the Fountain, I found some hard ice cream. But I did drink it very slowly and didn't go digging around in there with my spoon like I did last time. The best part of this martini was the Oreo cookie. The description kind of made it sound like there would be one cookie sitting on top, but it was actually crumbled up through the drink. The crumbles got really soggy and delicious, which made the whole experience like having a very adult version of Oreos and milk! This drink was definitely worthy of its fabulous name.

Sorry the quality isn't great, the restaurant is really dark.

I also ordered the world's smallest ice cream sundae, because, understandably, an ice cream martini isn't actually that much ice cream for the $8.50 you pay for it. Alcohol is expensive my friends. The sundae was totally adorable as was the tiny cup it was served in and the tiny spoon they give you to eat it! How fun. There was almost as much whipped cream as ice cream! Their vanilla ice cream is totally amazing. It is definitely an airy ice cream, as I guess you would expect with an aged ice cream. In addition, the it's not as sweet as a normal vanilla ice cream, which I think was great, because then you can really taste the vanilla. Also their chocolate sauce is seriously so good. It is more like eating fudge than chocolate sauce. It's almost as thick as peanut butter, and it definitely sticks to the roof of your mouth. The only problem with this adorable little treat? It leaves you wanting more!

So the sundae was also served with a little piece of candied orange peel on top, but I got so excited I ate it before I took a picture. I was so excited because I really don't like maraschino cherries and I was pleasantly surprised that this sundae had something different! 

UPDATE Just wanted to give you guys an update on the aged ice cream question. I got an email response like one day after I asked my question. Here was the answer: "First we will combine all the raw ingredients like the cream and sugars together in our pasteurization vat.  We then pasteurize all our base mix in batches no larger than five hundred gallons at a time.  This gives our ice cream that excellent old fashioned cooked flavor.  After the batch has completed that pasteurization process it is cooled down and sent to a holding tank.  This is where it is “aged”.  This allows the cream, sugar and any other ingredients to rest and help ensure that the full flavors are developed.  The next day we will add the final ingredients like the candies and cookies and complete the final packaging."