Best cone of the Tour de Soft Serve, at Poppy’s in Schenectady
I did not have the purest of motives when I signed up for FussyLITTLEBlog’s Tour de Soft Serve (Schenectady Edition). I intended to expose the futility of the exercise since all soft serve is the same, from the same mix and prepared in the same machines, is it not? So why in the world would anyone spend three hours gorging at five different soft serve stands, other than a passion for hypoglycemia?
Confronting my skepticism, the Fussy Profussor mustered a weary and knowing smile. There are multiple and important differences, he averred. First, the mixes are from various suppliers, each with its own recipe, and can vary significantly. There’s also a big distinction as to whether they are refrigerated or shelf-stable. Finally, the machines can be different and the way they are “tuned” can be different as well. I remain unconvinced on the last point but will stipulate that a well-curated machine will probably produce better product just like a bar that frequently cleans its tap lines will have better beer.
Poppy’s said they use Upstate Farm (second from left) soft serve mix
The variability of mixes is easy enough to confirm with a quick google. Liquid mixes contain dairy and must be refrigerated. One hopes that a high volume ice cream stand would use liquid mixes, although one of our stops had a suspect chemical taste to me. Dry, shelf-stable mixes can contain just about anything including some formulations you might not want in your body. These can be purchased in small quantities for “c-stores” (that’s what Sam’s Club calls 7-ll type places) with a soft serve machine in the snack area that might not get heavy use. Now that I know this, I’m surprised the soft serve stands don’t make a bigger deal of their mixes and brag when it is a premium dairy variety.
Our first stop was Dairy Circus, which has a clean and pleasant dining room that was recently rebuilt after a fire. After some fumbling, I established that the form factor for my test would be a kiddie cone with chocolate and vanilla swirl, no toppings. Dairy Circus didn’t have a kiddie cone, though, only a small, and I had already ordered vanilla before I determined the swirl was the way to go. I got a taste of the chocolate from a colleague’s cup and, interestingly, it had a very different texture, almost pudding-like vs the barely-stiff texture you expect. I wonder how the two flavors would have held up in a swirl. The taste? Tasted like soft serve.
Next was Jumpin’ Jack’s, a popular burger spot that has a separate building for sweets. Their soft serve was close to melting in texture and even though this was the smallest cone I was served (also the cheapest) I felt I had to rush to finish before the sticky soft serve ended up in my lap. The taste differences vs Dairy Circus were subtle.
Scary soft serve clown at Curry’s
Then on to Poppy’s. I should mention that none of these places are on main drags; unlike a Dunkin’ or McDonald’s, they expect the clientele to go to some effort to find them and most visitors are likely to be regulars. Poppy’s was behind a train yard and in fact my GPS steered me into the train yard so I was the last to arrive. Here I was greeted by the best cone of the tour. The vanilla tasted completely different, like actual vanilla ice cream. And after the texture debacle at Jumpy’s, I discovered the perfect consistency for soft serve: firm yet yielding, with a semi-soft center which quickly gives up its essence to an eager tongue.
Random soft serve artwork at Curry’s: detail of an ancient CPR poster on the window
Curry Freeze, our next stop, had the worst soft serve of the trip and was the first to have a distinctly chemical-y taste, making me think they prefer the convenience of the shelf stable mix. On the other hand, they had the scariest ice cream clown sign of the tour as well as some bonus creepy artwork, like an outline of the cone burned into a table top and covered with a plastic disk; the wood burning has faded in the sun so the takeaway is just “why”? Perhaps there is something about serving soft serve all day long that makes these proprietors cynical about human nature, much like circus midway personnel, and the bizarre and occasionally repulsive artwork is a way of relieving themselves, as it were.
My Tour de Soft Serve scoresheet
The final stop was Grandstand, of which neither good nor bad can be said, other than we had the tallying of results and amazingly, the winner on many scorecards was the worst place on mine—proving that not only does soft serve differ from one place to another but good people can disagree on how to evaluate it. Meanwhile, I now do know what good soft serve should taste like—a truly useless skill since it will be a very long time before I visit one of these establishments again.
