David's Famous Ice Cream: Meeting David
Text-heavy but awesome post ahead!
TL/DR: Met David of David's Famous Gourmet Frozen Custard and had an awesome time.
Today I had the awesome luck and good fortune to meet David of David's Famous Gourmet Frozen Custard. Now, how did a math graduate student and occasional (ok, you all know I'm lying) ice cream eater end up at a Kowalski's grocery store in Stillwater, Minnesota? About a week ago, my sister picked up a pint of David's Butter Mint frozen custard. She loved it. She reviewed it. She tweeted about it. Lo and behold David and his son/Vice President and General Counsel got in touch with us to let us know that David would be visiting several Twin Cities area Kowalski's this past weekend handing out samples, and that if we wanted to meet David we should show up. I was all over it. Obviously.
It kind of sucks that Lizzy missed out on this, since it was her review that started this whole thing in motion, but she has the consolation of soon moving to Iowa to attend University of Iowa, a mere 30 minute drive from Tipton, Iowa. Why is this significant? David's Famous is produced in Tipton of course!
Where do I even start with this day? Begin at the beginning I suppose. After introductions, I sampled each flavor. The vanilla was hands down the best vanilla ice cream I have ever had. Ditto the sea salt caramel, which had hints of butterscotch. The coffee was delicious and tasted like coffee, not watered-down, sugared-down dreck. The rhubarb was syrupy sweet and delicious. The tartness of the lemon meshed so well with the creaminess of the ice cream. Last but not least the dutch chocolate was probably the purest-tasting chocolate ice cream I have ever had. I was trying to put into words the reasons why I liked these flavors so much, how to describe how strong and dense the flavors were, and of course David had the perfect word. Vivid. The ice cream is very vividly flavored.
Lucky old me got to take home what was left of the sample pints. I plan to do a post with a more detailed review of each flavor soon, hopefully in about a week. I don't imagine I will have any problem finishing these flavors quickly.
Chatting with David while he handed out samples was incredibly fun. He pointed out that I should watch people's eyebrows as they sampled the ice cream. I think that, minus one grumpy lady, every set of eyebrows shot up in delight after tasting a sample. The most popular flavor to sample was the Sea Salt Caramel, which is also David's top seller.
We had some fun comparing the ingredient lists of various different ice cream brands and bemoaning frozen dairy desserts. As Lizzy mentioned in her post about the Butter Mint flavor, David's ice creams have at minimum 25% butterfat (which is insane). Apparently, as they were ramping up production, David's approached two different ice cream manufacturers about making their ice cream, but the manufacturers couldn't do it using their current processes. There was so much butterfat that the ice cream base would have churned into butter! Delicious, delicious chocolate butter.
While David first took his ice cream to RAGBRAI 4 years ago, they only began selling in stores about a year ago. Within that first year they have grown from offering their product in 13 stores to offering their product in over 200 stores. Maybe soon they will be able to say they sell it in over 9000! There's a reason. This ice cream/frozen custard is superb, and I'll tell you more about why in my review post. I definitely see myself purchasing these flavors in the future and am excited about any future flavors and developments.
So I'm sure David encounters way too people many who say, "You should think about making this flavor!" but I just had to ask if he had ever considered making an avocado flavor. He hadn't, but maybe I got some cogs turning. The world cannot have enough avocado ice cream.
There was only one slightly negative aspect to the day. After I sampled the frozen custard, David asked me a question I had been dreading. "Is this better than Ted Drewes?" Cue existential crisis. Cue thoughts of, "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE!!" I hemmed and hawed and said, "Well .... it's really delicious! Well .... I would totally buy any of these flavors multiple times." It was all for naught. I was forced to utter the dreaded words. I won't repeat them here. I'll only say that if I was standing in the freezer section of my grocery store looking at a pint of David's and a pint of Ted's I just might pick up a pint of David's. Thankfully he's not reading over my shoulder making me make a stronger statement than that.
This day was just so fun. I have the social skills of your typical mathematician so hopefully I didn't seem bored or underwhelmed because internally I was freaking out about how awesome this was and trying not to seem creepily excited. When the afternoon was over, I got into my car and did a little happy dance. Pretty sure a lady in the parking lot thought I was having some sort of fit.
TL/DR: Met David of David's Famous Gourmet Frozen Custard and had an awesome time.
Today I had the awesome luck and good fortune to meet David of David's Famous Gourmet Frozen Custard. Now, how did a math graduate student and occasional (ok, you all know I'm lying) ice cream eater end up at a Kowalski's grocery store in Stillwater, Minnesota? About a week ago, my sister picked up a pint of David's Butter Mint frozen custard. She loved it. She reviewed it. She tweeted about it. Lo and behold David and his son/Vice President and General Counsel got in touch with us to let us know that David would be visiting several Twin Cities area Kowalski's this past weekend handing out samples, and that if we wanted to meet David we should show up. I was all over it. Obviously.
It kind of sucks that Lizzy missed out on this, since it was her review that started this whole thing in motion, but she has the consolation of soon moving to Iowa to attend University of Iowa, a mere 30 minute drive from Tipton, Iowa. Why is this significant? David's Famous is produced in Tipton of course!
Where do I even start with this day? Begin at the beginning I suppose. After introductions, I sampled each flavor. The vanilla was hands down the best vanilla ice cream I have ever had. Ditto the sea salt caramel, which had hints of butterscotch. The coffee was delicious and tasted like coffee, not watered-down, sugared-down dreck. The rhubarb was syrupy sweet and delicious. The tartness of the lemon meshed so well with the creaminess of the ice cream. Last but not least the dutch chocolate was probably the purest-tasting chocolate ice cream I have ever had. I was trying to put into words the reasons why I liked these flavors so much, how to describe how strong and dense the flavors were, and of course David had the perfect word. Vivid. The ice cream is very vividly flavored.
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| The goods! The containers with the colored tops are the newer containers. |
Lucky old me got to take home what was left of the sample pints. I plan to do a post with a more detailed review of each flavor soon, hopefully in about a week. I don't imagine I will have any problem finishing these flavors quickly.
Chatting with David while he handed out samples was incredibly fun. He pointed out that I should watch people's eyebrows as they sampled the ice cream. I think that, minus one grumpy lady, every set of eyebrows shot up in delight after tasting a sample. The most popular flavor to sample was the Sea Salt Caramel, which is also David's top seller.
We had some fun comparing the ingredient lists of various different ice cream brands and bemoaning frozen dairy desserts. As Lizzy mentioned in her post about the Butter Mint flavor, David's ice creams have at minimum 25% butterfat (which is insane). Apparently, as they were ramping up production, David's approached two different ice cream manufacturers about making their ice cream, but the manufacturers couldn't do it using their current processes. There was so much butterfat that the ice cream base would have churned into butter! Delicious, delicious chocolate butter.
While David first took his ice cream to RAGBRAI 4 years ago, they only began selling in stores about a year ago. Within that first year they have grown from offering their product in 13 stores to offering their product in over 200 stores. Maybe soon they will be able to say they sell it in over 9000! There's a reason. This ice cream/frozen custard is superb, and I'll tell you more about why in my review post. I definitely see myself purchasing these flavors in the future and am excited about any future flavors and developments.
So I'm sure David encounters way too people many who say, "You should think about making this flavor!" but I just had to ask if he had ever considered making an avocado flavor. He hadn't, but maybe I got some cogs turning. The world cannot have enough avocado ice cream.
There was only one slightly negative aspect to the day. After I sampled the frozen custard, David asked me a question I had been dreading. "Is this better than Ted Drewes?" Cue existential crisis. Cue thoughts of, "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE!!" I hemmed and hawed and said, "Well .... it's really delicious! Well .... I would totally buy any of these flavors multiple times." It was all for naught. I was forced to utter the dreaded words. I won't repeat them here. I'll only say that if I was standing in the freezer section of my grocery store looking at a pint of David's and a pint of Ted's I just might pick up a pint of David's. Thankfully he's not reading over my shoulder making me make a stronger statement than that.
This day was just so fun. I have the social skills of your typical mathematician so hopefully I didn't seem bored or underwhelmed because internally I was freaking out about how awesome this was and trying not to seem creepily excited. When the afternoon was over, I got into my car and did a little happy dance. Pretty sure a lady in the parking lot thought I was having some sort of fit.
What a hoot!
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