Chicago-inspired taste in a new ice cream flavor

One crisis after another – climate change and nationalism, crime and, oh yes, don’t forget, Thursday’s presidential debate. “From bad to bad the exasperated mind continues,” as TS Eliot says.

Unless it’s restored by… well, it’s summer; Let’s talk about ice cream.

The world won’t deteriorate any faster because we stop to consider the creamy, cool goodness.

In my defense, I rarely write about ice cream. There was a 2009 column that tore the lid off the spumoni issue — it’s not Italian — and then, in 1996, when I escaped parenting a newborn long enough to inhale a giant atomic hot fudge sundae at Margie’s Candies.

I won’t write now, but Graeter’s Ice Cream, a venerable Ohio company founded in 1870, transformed a former auto body shop in downtown Northbrook into its first Illinois ice cream parlor in 2015. They offer a wide range of flavors, my previous favorite. being black raspberry chocolate chips – think inch-long shards of Dove quality dark chocolate.

Graeter’s offers tasting spoonfuls. As much as I hate waiting in line with taste experiments, it seems like a lack of imagination to not try new flavors before ordering black raspberry chocolate chip. In spring, lemon meringue pie was in the spotlight. I like lemons. And I like pie. A taste. Boom. Pieces of crust. Lemon candy pieces. My mind reorganized itself. I ordered a bowl.

That was it. The black raspberry chocolate chips were forgotten. For the first time in my life, I went to an ice cream parlor looking for a specific flavor. A few days later I came back for another bowl. And I bought two pints so I would have some on hand. Two.

Lemon Meringue Pie Ice Cream – how did they make that?

“It was a team approach.” said Bob Graeter, head of quality assurance and fourth generation to run the company. “We always work from a portfolio of 15 or 20 concepts. See the trends, what’s out there. Lemon is a trendy flavor. We’re seeing a lot of citrus flavors in ice cream these days. We played with lemon ice cream, with the idea of ​​reinterpreting baked goods. We have a baking business in Cincinnati.

So how do you concoct a new flavor? Order a few kegs from IceCremFlavCo?

“We create the flavoring ourselves, using lemon oil and lemon juice,” he said. “Then we found a marshmallow flavor base in addition to the lemon. There are pieces of pie dough in it, then a piece of candy.

This is inspired by a Chicago classic produced by Ferrara.

“I’m a baby boomer,” Graeter said. “We remembered their Lemonheads. This piece is not made by them, it is made for ice cream, like a little Lemonhead.

Sprinkling stuff in ice cream is always in style.

“We’ve been around for a long time, over 150 years,” he said. “Historically, the flavors were simply: strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, peach. We still make these flavors. But for 10 years, people have wanted stuff in their ice cream. We always ate chocolate chips.

And what chips. It’s not like they’re mixing up bags of generic cookie pieces.

“We buy high quality chocolate, melt it, add a little oil to lower the melting point, put a batch in the freezer, pour in liquid chocolate,” explained Graeter, of their chocolate making process. French pots. “It hardens and hardens, we break it. It creates unique distributions of small and large chips of various shapes. It’s like a treasure hunt when you look for chips in your ice cream.

Is business in Chicago good?

“We’re doing pretty well,” he said. “We opened a few stores.” Besides Northbrook, there is another salon in Winnetka and pints in supermarket chains. “Chicago is very far from Cincinnati. The distribution system can be difficult; the cost of operating a business in Chicago is higher. General labor costs are higher.

His daughter Annie works in the retail side of the business, representing the fifth generation of the family. What is life like in the ice cream business?

“It’s hard,” he said. “We work nights and weekends. Friday, Saturday, Sunday in these places, it’s 60% of sales. Retail is our biggest team.

Not that Bob Graeter is complaining.

“I’m happy,” he said. “Ice cream is one of those taste memories we have as a child…”

My childhood taste memories are of cups of Sealtest vanilla, eaten with a flat wooden spoon, which might explain why I fell so in love with Graeter.

“What you love, your core, is what you stick to,” Graeter said. “People tend to come back. New flavors are a way to engage the customer, maintain the relationship and attract attention.

I would say it works.