It's summer. It's hot. It's time for ice cream, and food writers all over America seem fixated on every facet of the delicious concoction and its variations.
Except one.
I've yet to come across celebrations of the ice cream soda—that glorious trinity of syrup, carbonated water (or club soda or seltzer or fizzy water) and ice cream, a harmonious trio that acknowledges Bob Dorough, who wrote, "Three Is a Magic Number."
Therefore, here begins discussion of ice cream sodas that, we hope, will bring reader suggestions of favored sites for future sweet commentary.
We begin, of course, with the Crown Candy Company, at the corner of 14th Street and St. Louis Avenue for 97 years and the creator of instant nostalgia, even if most of the antique Coca-Cola memorabilia is off the walls and a Pepsi-Cola dispenser notes a new allegiance.
Three generations of the Karandzieff family, originally immigrants from Macedonia, have worked behind the marble counter. We recently watched Andy, standing with a tall, 24-ounce glass in one hand, his other leaning on the syrup dispenser. He blasted some soda into the glass, stirred, and reversed the handle to lessen the soda flow. Ice cream, more soda, whipped cream, a cherry.
Voila!
Some liquid overflows the glass, as it should, and the melting ice cream enriches the soda, making it a chilly, tongue-tingling, carbonated treat. My preference goes beyond the chocolate soda with vanilla ice cream, or "black and white," as we called it in my Brooklyn boyhood. I prefer the "Hoboken," or pineapple soda with coffee ice cream. My favorite at Crown is chocolate with black cherry ice cream—a combination that leaves cherry pieces to be scraped from the bottom of the glass. For the chocolate junkie, chocolate with chocolate-chocolate chip fills the need.
St. Louis' long-time love for ice cream and the tales of a vendor from Norfolk, Va., making cones at the 1904 World's Fair, are legend, but delving into history demands a stop at Bassetts, in the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, as we did not long ago. Lewis Dubois Bassett began making and selling ice cream in 1861 and set up shop in Philadelphia in 1885. When the market opened in 1893, Bassett moved in, a fixture in the same spot ever since. Like Crown, it's a family operation, making sodas in the same way, with delicious, super-rich ice cream. I'll match these two against anyone.
