< Boise August harvest news | Main | Dried Apricots >

Eating ice cream in Denver

Posted at 2:46 PM on August 21, 2008 by Paulette Thompson

It was pouring down raining this past weekend in Denver. It was unseasonably cold. No, I was not there for political reasons. I was visiting my brother Corbin, his wife Lisa, and their two children, my seven - year old niece Macee and my four - year old nephew Graysin.

None of us had any idea that we would go on a quest for fabulous ice cream there on such a day ( I have mentioned here before that I love ice cream. I love gelati, too. Snoqualmie, Molly Moon, Gelatiamo, and Bottega Italiana, just to mention a few. I really want to try Mora's). At the Denver Art Museum I had had an Americano made with Novo beans. Novo is a local family - owned coffee roaster. I should have been set it was so good.
I did not know that there were two brand new places serving housemade natural ice cream with quality ingredients in Denver, not too far away from each other, both in an up and coming neighborhood, West 32nd Avenue. Well, local ice cream places are good gentrification...

We were trying to find a particular independent bookstore (Cultural Legacy) so that I could acquire books for a course I will be teaching in the fall. Off we went to try to find the place. On the way, we passed by Little Man Ice Cream, an ice cream place that resembled a huge silver milk can. I hoped to stop by on the way back.

We didn't get to go there this time because we ended up going to Red Trolley Coffee, Cake and Cone. After finding out that that location of Cultural Legacy did not have what I wanted--the owner said I needed a purchase order to buy what I required from their educational outlet. I was bummed and announced to my family that we needed ice cream. Macee and Graycin were ecstatic.

I found a copy of that week's Westword and there just happened to be a blurb about both ice cream places. Off we went to Red Trolley Coffee, Cake and Cone. Red Trolley Coffee, Cake and Cone makes their ice cream and gelato fresh daily. My posse and I had a field day sampling, especially the kids. Graycin was captivated by the strawberry gelato. Macee got into banana nut bread ice cream among others. I tried both the vanilla ice cream and vanilla gelato. I preferred the ice cream over the gelato.

What was really cool about the place was that they have root beer float happy hour from 3 - 6 daily. The root beer is on tap. I tried it. It would go well with cinnamon or vanilla ice cream.

Now, it would have been great to try out the other place, but it was time for dinner. Besides, we would eat ice cream for dessert later on that evening. We took home cinnamon ice cream and cherry limeade sorbetto. We also took an ice cream sandwich along.
I'll get to Little Man Ice Cream on my next visit. I hope my family checks it out before I return. If you are in Denver, holler.

P.S. I didn't make it to Minneapolis - St. Paul this year. For those of you who are heading that way, go to Izzy's for great ice cream.