Philly’s unsung ice cream parlors | Let’s Eat

If you have a favorite ice cream shop, you can always use a second dairy opinion, right? Today, I dish on 15 unsung spots in the city and suburbs. Also this week, Craig LaBan gets inside a classic Shore diner, Jenn Ladd drops the first word of an un-boring new restaurant in Germantown, and I deliver megapixels of restaurant news.

💔 But first, let’s pause to remember David Ansill, a groundbreaking chef for three decades, who died Monday of cancer. He could cook everything, except for chicken fingers.

— Mike Klein

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Who else has taken a road trip for ice cream? Maddie Smith and Mia Svirsky logged a thousand miles over three weeks through Pennsylvania as the American Dairy Association North East’s chief ice cream officers. Among their stops were Penn State Berkey Creamery in University Park, Fox Meadows in Ephrata, and a few on the outskirts of Philly: Chester Springs Creamery in Chester Springs, Merrymead Farm in Lansdale, and Tanner Bros. in Ivyland. Rita Giordano quizzed the pair on their favorites and shares a taste of their cow-to-cone experience.

All this discussion about butterfat and mouth-feel — as well as the fact that I’ve been driving too much locally this summer on our rocky roads — has inspired an ice cream round-up. This is not a collection of familiar shops that are regulars on the “best-of” lists. We know our local gems like Arctic Scoop, Bassetts, Franklin Fountain, Harper’s, Milk Jawn, Scoop DeVille, Weckerly’s, and Zsa’s. Allow me to shout out other small shops and gelaterias that deserve love, too — no chance you’ll have Breyer’s remorse.

Here are 15 destinations, along with flavor suggestions:

Philadelphia: Cloud Cups in Kensington (birthday cake); Irv’s on Cherry Street Pier (coquito); La Guerrerense in South Philadelphia (100 flavors, including gansito, which is like a strawberry Tastykake Krimpet); Marlei’s Sweet Tooth in Northern Liberties (apple crumb pie); Vanderwende in Old City (salty caramel); Vita in Rittenhouse (pistachio).

Pennsylvania suburbs: Freddy Hill Farms in Lansdale (peanut butter cup); Gibby’s in Levittown (chocolate peanut butter); Grandma Jannah’s in Jenkintown (cheesecake); Uncle Mike’s in Warminster (Mike’s chocolate Elvis); Zwalen’s in Audubon (chocolate, made with its own chocolate).

South Jersey: Cream Valley Custard in Woodstown (creamsicle); Daddy O’s in Marlton (pumpkin spice); Don & Bert’s Custard Stand in Paulsboro (vanilla, and do not skip the cheese fries); the Ice Cream Bar in Delanco (banana pudding).

🍦Where else to go? Check our staff rundown of great ice cream and other frozen treats, like water ice and even banana splits.

🐄 Road trip! Where to buy cheese and ice cream, meet the sheep and cows, and support local farmers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

🍨 A word about Cloud Cups. Galen Thomas’ gelato business started in Fishtown-Kensington and moved to Kensington’s Maken Studios North last spring. Now, Thomas is working to revive the original location (2311 Frankford Ave.) and it will open soon as a second location.

🍦 And a word about Cuzzy’s. The sudden shutdown earlier this year of Cuzzy’s, which opened in Queen Village in 2022, sent readers into mourning. I wish I had scoop about a revival, but Cuzzy Angiolillo and his cousin, Vin, aren’t commenting. Meanwhile, all you Queen Village people, know that Birdhouse Gelato is coming this fall to 806 S. Sixth St., while Cuzzy’s former storefront at 618 S. Fifth St. will become a Levantine bakery (read on for details).

⬆️ Shown in the photo above (clockwise from top left): peanut butter chip from Freddy Hill Farms, coffee from Vanderwende, apple crumb pie from Marlei’s Sweet Tooth, and coquito from Irv’s.

The PLCB has set up a lottery this week for the chance to buy bottles of nine rare whiskeys. As Stephanie Farr writes, the hootch ranges from $54.99 for a bottle of Stagg Straight Bourbon Barrel Proof to $7,499.99 for Weller Millennium Straight Bourbon. Seventy-five hundred dollars a bottle?! I did the math, and it comes out to $468.75 a shot.

Mustache Bill’s on Long Beach Island is for sale, but that likely won’t go down anytime soon. Join Craig LaBan with owner Bill Smith for a visit to this Jersey Shore diner classic, where you can enjoy a Cyclops, a UFO-shaped hybrid of two pancakes and an over-medium egg that’s out of this world.

Beijing Duck, serving what owner Stevie Lam calls a “real traditional” rendition of the dish, as well as dim sum and seafood, is on the way to 911 Race St. in Chinatown for an Aug. 28 soft-opening. It will be BYOB until the liquor license arrives.

The two South Philadelphia bars owned by Jonn Klein have found buyers. (You may remember Jenn Ladd’s article from February, describing Klein’s planned move to Croatia.) Neither the Dive nor Watkins Drinkery is expected to change too much under new regimes, effective this fall with license transfers as Klein keeps the bricks. Watkins (1712 S. 10th St.) will bring together Alex Kaslowitz (a marketing specialist in baby equipment) and Jack Ross (who has a decade-plus in bars and restaurants). At the Dive (947 E. Passyunk Ave.), the prospective owner is Joseph Brown, whose background includes event planning.

Two interesting bakeries are on the way:

Edwin De La Rosa will expand duties at Fishtown’s Middle Child Clubhouse with his promotion to executive chef, adding dinner to his oversight of breakfast and lunch. Chef Sam Henzy has left. De La Rosa (shown above in New York, after winning Good Morning America’s “United States of Breakfast” competition in June 2023) says he’ll unify the menus while adding shareable plates and more seasonality as he expands his work with area farms. Expect touches of his Dominican heritage, but not too much, at least initially. “I don’t want the menu to feel like it’s at the mercy of one person’s identity,” he told me, ever the team player.

Dionicio Jiménez, the James Beard nominee from Cantina La Martina, and wife Mariangeli Alicea Saez are looking at Aug. 30 for the soft opening of La Baja, their tiny Mexican BYOB at 9 N. Main St. in Ambler. Opening menu will reflect Mediterranean and Asian flavors, inspired by the 1920s immigration of Chinese and Japanese people to Baja California. Dinner Tuesday through Sunday. I snagged the menu: tostada with kampachi, pickled fresno, fermented black avocado, uni, Persian cucumbers, and yuzu; and ravioli filled with blue crab, avocado, bacon, recado negro, and xnipec salsa! For reservation info, follow on Instagram.

Germantown has a new all-day cafe and BYOB with Southeast Asian and Hawaiian flair. Das Good Cafe on Chelten Avenue is backed by veteran restaurateurs Anh Vongbandith and her husband, Anou, who’s also the chef. Shown below is a Laotian-style breakfast: two eggs cooked to order, house-made Laotian sausage, and tomato jeow mak len sauce on the side. As Anh told Jenn Ladd: “We don’t like the normal boring stuff.”

Pepsi Dig In Day is returning to support Black-owned restaurants on Saturday, offering special buy-one-get-one-free meals at more than 30 Black-owned restaurants across the country. Philly participants are FoodChasers’ Kitchen in Elkins Park (the special is shrimp or whiting and grits) and Jacobs Catering in Mount Airy (fennel-glazed salmon). Customers get a free Pepsi Zero Sugar.

Burlington County Summer Restaurant Week continues though Saturday with deals at dozens of restaurants.

Center City District Restaurant Week is Sept. 8-21, with three-course, prix-fixe dinners offered for $40 or $60, and two-course lunches for $20. Here’s the list.

SweetWater Bar & Grill in Cinnaminson will have its last call on Saturday, as owner George Kyrtatas announced on Facebook. The family opened it as Hathaway’s in the 1980s.

F1 Arcade, a racing-simulator arcade, will fill the space once occupied by West Elm at 1330 Chestnut St., as Jack Blumgart reported this week. I caught up with Jon Gardner, F1 Arcade’s U.S. president, who told me that the food will be globally inspired, reflecting Formula 1′s international appeal. But while other experiential bars (e.g. Dave & Buster’s, Flight Club, Puttshack, Beat the Bomb) have fairly standard menus, F1 tracks more upscale with such options as seafood towers and caviar. Opening is due in mid-2025.

Maison Lotus will be the name of the French-Vietnamese restaurant from Pearl and Paul Somboonsong of Win Signature Restaurant Group, which is replacing Margaret Kuo’s at 175 Lancaster Ave. in Wayne in early 2025. (Its working name was Ad Hoc.) Pearl Somboonsong says Maison Lotus will have an adjacent bakery/cafe, much as Suraya in Fishtown does.

What’s the name of the oyster that started it all for New Jersey’s hot oyster scene?

A) Brigantine Bivalve

B) Pleasantville Pearl

C) Cape May Salt

D) Bob

Find out if you know the answer, and by all means, check out Craig’s six favorite Jersey oysters.

Last week, I issued a call for whole-belly clams, a New England specialty uncommon in the Philadelphia area. Several readers pointed out that Legal Sea Foods, the Boston-based fish-house chain with a branch at King of Prussia, has them on the menu. “While not quite ‘Flo’s Clam Shack in Middleton, R.I.’ level, they are a pretty tasty fix,” wrote reader Alex D. of Exton. I checked out Legal’s clams — a shareable basket of sweet and briny, cornmeal-dusted fried steamers ($39), served over thick-cut fries with small cups of coleslaw and tartar sauce, and a lemon wedge. So what if the view is a mall parking lot.

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