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Review: Paramount Room
It was sometime after 8 Friday night at the Chicago Luxury Ice Cream Festival when Benjy texted me from one of the many long lines formed inside the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. The text read, "This is like going to Great America, only you have a small bite of ice cream waiting for you at the end instead of getting on a roller coaster."
That summed up the festival in a nutshell. For an inaugural festival, a surprising number of people turned out and cursed under their breath as they queued up for a sample of artisan small batch ice creams. The longest lines were found on the second floor of the museum. Clandestino supper club chef/owner Efrain Cuevas was serving homemade chocolate and piquin chile ice cream as fast as he could scoop it into cups. Cuevas used 95 percent bittersweet chocolate in his mix and the piquin chiles gave it a spice akin to cinnamon. At the other end of the hall John and Mary Mayer of Mayfell Farms in Avery, WI (near the Minnesota border) received heaps of praise for their three sheep's milk ice creams. A cooperative dairy farm, the Mayers and partner Mark Fellner keep a flock of Friesian and Friesian-cross sheep which have been selected for their milking and mothering abilities. The sheep are fed a steady diet of grass, alfalfa hay and a little bit of grain and, while they aren't organically certified, no genetically modified grain is used in the feed.
The other standout ice creams were from Blue Marble Family Dairy Farm, which doesn't make ice cream for retail sale. Instead, owner Nick Kirch had 4-6 flavors made specifically for the festival by Hot Chocolate owner Mindy Segal as a way of promoting his creams. Segal used both whole milk and heavy cream in creating flavors flavors such as s'mores and Three Floyds' Moloko milk stout to a vanilla and duck egg ice cream that was worth cutting in line for. that is, if Blue Marble had anything resembling a line. Nestled with Bobtail Ice Cream practically under a stairwell all one had to do was walk up to their table.
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Am I not being forewarned of these events? Reviews are cool but being told when/where these events are going to happen is even cooler.
you mean like this?
http://chicagoist.com/2009/09/03/preview_chicago_luxury_ice_cream_fe.php
hah.
well then make a calendar or something. i blame you personally for me not knowing about this. :P
That's what the Friday Buffet is for:
http://chicagoist.com/2009/09/04/the_friday_buffet_27.php
We'll bear your cross this time...
fine, i'll buy you an espresso next time I bump into you in Starbucks.
If he gets espresso, I get a pony.
didn't i buy you beer? will you settle for luxury ice cream?
You'll get espresso and like it.
An interesting first attempt at this event. I enjoyed sampling a number of ice creams in flavors I hadn't tried before and from makers I haven't had before. Not sure Luxury was the correct adjective for the event. Gourmet would've perhaps been better for a foodie event... As a first attempt at the event, the logistics certainly had room for improvement like the lines mentioned in the post. But I think also fairly easy to fix for next time. Also, the $25 admission was a bit steep... lower the price to $10 or $12 and go to a cash bar next time!
A Three Floyds ice cream?? Sign me the fuck up!