Fro-yo may be finding a second wind to its ’90s supremacy, but I would rather eat frozen custard any day. It’s not an easy thing to find these days, so this summer’s opening of Whistler’s Ice Cream Extraordinaire in Vienna has brought a welcome change to my frozen dessert game. Made with an egg-yolk base, custard may be the antithesis of gut-friendly yogurt, but when treating myself, I see nothing wrong with going for it full force.
Whistler’s is located in the former Molly’s Yogurt Shop space and it still has a feeling of impermanence, the mark of its start as a pop-up, according to FFXNow. The previous sign is papered over and the old yogurt machine is labeled “out of order.” But what matters is in the freezer case: 10 cardboard containers filled with the good stuff.
At 1 p.m. on a Monday, my companion and I were the first guests of the day. The young counter staffer had plenty of time to share tiny spoons of flavors for us to try. I had walked in resolved to fill a bowl of the ginger flavor, which tastes like the ginger candies with which its voluptuous body is punctuated. But I wasn’t prepared for the cherry stracciatella. I knew that in the gelato world, stracciatella was one of my favorites for its fine capillaries of chocolate woven throughout. Paired with fresh chunks of cherry, it delivers on every bit of promise that Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia always narrowly missed for me.
I ordered my scoop as a sundae, bathed in hot fudge, then finished with whipped cream, finely chopped walnuts, and a maraschino cherry. I found it too rich to finish, but my companion picked up the slack and ate every bite of his sugar cone, too. The two-scoop stack featured vanilla dotted with flecks of the natural bean, topped with a mellow honey lavender scoop with tiny morsels of the dried flower mixed in.
Right now, there’s one indoor table and one outdoors at Whistler’s. I was able to sit down this time, but if I’m forced to take my sundae to go in the future, I won’t be surprised. Even on a Monday, the line began to build shortly after the shop’s opening. If the mood for custard seizes me on a weekend, I will expect the crowd that the sweets amply deserve.
521 Maple St., Vienna, whistlersicecream.com
Feature image of a sundae at Whistler’s Ice Cream Extraordinaire, Alice Levitt
