Vanilla Soft Serve

Cindy's Drive-in is a little two-window ice cream shop off of 202 in East Granby (a bit North of Springfield.) According to their web page, they close for the (2024) season on November 3 - I haven't been there since 2005, when these pictures were taken, so I can't confirm any of that. They do appear to have an extensive soft serve collection, including the re-mixin machine that Goodhile's had, with the same banner; their web menu also includes ice cream and hotdogs, Flurries and Italian Ice, a broad range of toppings, and for travelling pets, the Doggie Delux and Doggie Delight.

First Visit (in 2005)

I found Cindy's on a meandering back-road¹ drive to Connecticut with my brand new Mini Cooper Convertible, and stopping for roadside ice cream was a stereotypical Convertible Driver thing to do (thus the storefront picture above, showing off the car as much as the ice cream shop.) Despite years of experience with New England ice cream serving sizes, I ordered a large vanilla soft serve - and only realized what I was getting into when the server had to unlatch the window to hand me the entire thing.

Note that the ice cream was three or four inches taller than you see here, as I had to eat some of it to get it stable enough to take a picture - one-handed, with the "Nokia Lifeblog Multimedia Diary" software on my Nokia 6630 (the new 2.0 version had just added rudimentary geotagging.) While this seems extraordinarily primitive now, the fact that I could (in a few clicks²) get this picture and dump it directly to flickr was, in Nokia's traditional style, way too early³, almost science-fictional, without actually setting any trends or getting any credit for it.

I made it about halfway through before having to put the rest into a cup so I could finish it on the road (Granby was a half-way point on a longer trip to Western CT.)

Future Visits

My current plan is to get the convertible back on the road for a Summer of 2025 ice cream tour, with Cindy's being one of the early stops. Depending on other plans, I might just do a 20th anniversary recreation of these pictures, monster cone included; it's more likely that I'll do a reasonably-sized chocolate-dip cone instead. If I go for regular ice cream, though, "Rocky Rt. 202" stands out, along with Bear Claw, Graham Central Station, and Butter Crunch; they also currently list an Apple Crisp Delight Sundae. Plenty of choice, but it's a 90 minute drive so we'll see how that actually works out.

I found Goodhile's while looking at things west of Wachusett Reservoir (if you look at the experimental map page you'll see that other than Ice Cream Cottage on the South Shore the reviews here come from a fairly specific box, and I wanted something a little "outside the box". Well, this place particularly caught my eye because it was the first ice cream place where the reviews primarily talk about how good their fried chicken¹ is...

Despite that, it is a conventional ice cream shop, with two windows under an overhang, a couple of tables, and multiple signs that specifically say "ice cream" - so it's definitely on the correct side of the line between "ice cream shop" and "restaurant or store that happens to have ice cream" but in a way that clarifies where that line actually is.

First Visit

While Goodhile's doesn't have any web presence of their own, the poster listening their extraordinary 24 flavors of soft serve has a url, for the manufacturer of the Wadden 24 Flavor System - instead of needing a machine per flavor, there's one machine and a mixer stage for flavors. One of the listed flavors was Butter Pecan, so the mixer apparently handles crunchy bits too. I was there fairly late and was only able to get the basic Vanilla soft serve, but the texture an creaminess was quite good; I'll definitely try and get the German Chocolate or Butter Pecan on a future visit. ( Update: Wadden has a detail page with a video of the system that shows how you dispense soft serve, add mixins and flavor, remix it, and re-dispense into a cone. Pretty clever, and also explains how you can have the mix-machine shut down for the night and still be able to serve a base vanilla soft serve...)

They do have a short list of hard ice cream flavors - but the Blake's brand went away in 2023 although Bliss Microcreamery picked up a few of the unusual ones. They also have Shakes and Sundaes, and a "Razzle" blizzard-equivalent.²

Also of note - they share a parking lot with Stewart's Chocolates and also share the proprietor's name: Stewart John Goodhile. (They're only open 10am-6pm but I expect to check them out when I next visit...)