Ice Cream Nachos

Uhlman's Farm is a little "corner" ice cream shop in Westborough, with vast amounts of parking, several different areas of picnic benches, and four windows with room for extensive lines. It's an actual farm - past the parking area is a field at least as big as the parking where I spotted half a dozen cows, and the low fences suggest they probably interact with visitors when given the opportunity.¹

The large ice cream cups (the story is lengthy and apparently doesn't fit on the smaller sizes) have a detailed history of Uhlman's having started out as Smithfield Ice Cream in Worcester, which bought milk from Uhlman's, and did a fairly modern "merge with your supplier" back in 1969, and that the modern Uhlman's still uses locally sourced milk (though I suspect the handful of cows on-site isn't quite big enough for their entire supply.)

Everything

Uhlman's has one of the most thorough menus I've found so far - if I ever convert to a standard checklist form for these reviews, I'd probably start here, and then add a couple of novelties from elsewhere.² While their menu is dominated by hard ice cream, they also have (hard) yogurt, basic soft serve³, and a range of No Sugar added, vegan, and "allergy-friendly" desserts.⁴

They have toppings (including Maple Walnut) and candy toppings (including nerds, gummy bears, and fruity pebbles) - they of course have chocolate jimmies but I couldn't find them on any of the signs.

They have four sizes of cups, cones, and sundaes (3oz up to 12oz) as well as a four-flavor "flight". They also have hand-packed pints and quarts, and five sizes of "machine-packed" ice cream to-go from pint up to 3 gallons. (Alternatively they have 9" round ice-cream cakes, priced about halfway between 1 gallon and 3 gallon buckets.)

This is also the third place I've seen with "Ice Cream Nachos" - waffle cone pieces with two baby scoops of ice cream and two toppings. Their "New England Weather-inspired" item is the "Cow-lossal Flurry". Other ice-cream-related drinks include frappes (and vegan oat milk frappes), freezes, floats, ice cream soda, frozen lemonade and frozen horchata slushies, crushed fruit smoothies, Falooda and Creamsicle.

They also have "girl scout cookie frappes" - Samoa and Thin Mint - amusingly, the thin mint one is topped with two thin mint cookies, but is based on mint oreo ice cream, which is probably some sort of branding crime...

They also have a "Pup Cup Sundae" - yogurt topped with chopped hotdogs(!), peanut butter whipped cream, and a dog bone.

The ice cream itself

While I was tempted by the Creamsicle and the Thin Mint Frappe, I originally planned to get one of my reference "crunchy + chocolate" combos - Butter Crunch and Extreme Chocolate (with chocolate jimmies). Unfortunately they were out of Extreme Chocolate so I substituted Cookie Monstah on the fly.

The crunch bits were quite good - not hard enough to hurt your teeth, just reasonably crunchy. The ice cream base was close to vanilla (good, but plain.) This is where I first noticed that the cookie monstah flavor was not quite what I was expecting...

It was blue! Specifically, the color of the Cookie Monster himself. I should have expected this, but most shops I've seen the "monster" flavor is green after the Fenway Park Green Monster. The cookie dough was good - sweet with some sugary crunch to it⁵.

Next Visit

Most likely choices are the Creamsicle and the Thin Mint Frappe, with an option of the Extreme Chocolate if they have it back in stock. Frozen Pudding and Fudge Ripple are also high on the list.

Ice Cream Trucks

Researching ice cream businesses in Massachusetts I've found a number of them that, while they have a street address on google maps, are only an ice cream truck that's available for events and catering. Uhlman's is both - they have two ice cream trucks available, they're even listed on the menu.

Foley's Ice Cream Shoppe is the first "South Shore" place I've reviewed, as it was one of a dozen or so in a 10 mile radius of Ikea so it was a reasonable "on the way back" stop. It's also right on the edge of closing for the winter - I was there on Saturday and their last day was Sunday 6 October - so by the time you read this it will be too late to visit until next spring (but see the Thanksgiving notes below.)

Foley's is on a major road with on-street parking - all of the off-street parking appears to be private, and they're tucked up against the commuter rail tracks (Middleborough Line) so there aren't really any side streets. It has a looong bench out front, an indoor counter and a couple of tables of indoor seating. They also have a self-serve freezer with pints and half pints.

First Visit

Since they were closing for the year and I wasn't going to be able to come back and try other things, I went with a Reese's Sundae - milk chocolate sauce, peanut butter sauce, chopped Reese's cups, on vanilla ice cream (with the obligatory pile of whipped cream.) The vanilla itself was reasonably good - not top tier, but a fine base for a sundae that you're adding lots of other stuff into.

As a photographer, I appreciate the clear cups for showing off the chocolate and peanut butter sauces, and whipped cream melts slower than ice cream so it didn't end up too messy.

The sundae was well-assembled, I got halfway down and was still finding Reese's chunks and chocolate sauce - that's easy for a "tray-style" presentation, but takes some attention to detail when building a sundae in a tall narrow cup.

Future Visits

They do have a decent flavor list, including Graham Central Station; I'd probably try their Chocolate Peanut Butter and maybe Coffee Oreo on a visit next spring. They also have interesting toppings including "edible cookie dough" and "strawberry crunch"; they're also specific about "chocolate jimmies/rainbow sprinkles" without Making It A Thing.

They have frappes, slushies, raspberry lime rickeys, and root beer floats; their weather-themed concoction is a Nor'easter. They also have ice cream sandwiches and ice cream nachos (as seen previously.)

They have a distinct dog-specific treat - the "Lassie" is a custom frozen yogurt, peanut butter, and banana blend, served with a homemade dog biscuit. Most pet treats are just discount-priced smaller servings, this is the first place I've seen go all-in on making something special for your dog.

Holy Moley Foley Challenge

This almost fits under the "ice cream flight" category, but it's a little more than that - it starts with 5 scoops, 3 toppings, and whipped cream - but then adds an in-house challenge: "Finish in 10 minutes, win a t-shirt." There is rule list with more details, along with pictures of successful challengers...

Thanksgiving

"Tomorrow we can eat broccoli, but today is for ice cream! -- Malory Hobson"¹ I was originally going to quote this because I'd come here after dinner at Smokey Bones that included Broccoli, but then I found a better reason...

I mentioned above that they've closed for the season. They actually reopen specifically to sell ice cream pies (and pints) for Thanksgiving (24-27 November 2024) and Christmas (20-23 December 2024.) That's novel, especially among places that close for the winter, but there's more: aside from common flavors they have a Holiday Pie which is a glorious Trompe-l'œil of a Thanksgiving Dinner:

• mashed potatoes and gravy: vanilla ice cream topped with butterscotch sauce
• stuffing: cookie dough crumble
• can-style cranberry sauce: strawberry sherbet?²
• turkey drumstick: sugar cone with ice cream and graham cracker topping
• peas and carrots: green and orange mini-m&ms.

(I know, peas and carrots are not broccoli, let me know when you figure out an ice-cream adjacent simulation of broccoli - or better yet, tell them and maybe we'll see it on next year's pies.) This is art, and I'm definitely going to try and find someone to serve it to this year...

Sterling Ice Cream is on 62 just southeast of 190. It's a fairly large building but there's only really one or two ice cream windows; the other half of the overhang is for fried food and hotdogs, and the other half of the building is "Cafe Fresh Bagel" (which seems to be what has the drive-in service, not sure if you can get ice cream on that side - the bagel places closes at 2, so it's definitely a separate thing.) At least for the summer there's a huge tent with a dozen picnic benches; there's also a vast amount of parking. It's about half a mile from the Davis Mega Maze; it's also not far from Rota Spring Farm Ice Cream.

While tagging pictures, I discovered that this was not my first visit; I was there 11 years ago and had a soft serve dip cone - which seems to no longer be on the menu.¹

I got Monster Mash (lots of candy and cookies in a vanilla base) and Butter Pecan. The Monster Mash was ok, but not nearly as creamy as you find at most ice cream places around here; it may have just been the vanilla base, I should try their "Extreme Chocolate" for comparison. They also had a "Campfire S'mores" and a "Maine Black Bear" flavor.

This is also the second place I've seen listing "Ice Cream Nachos" - the other one was Friendly's who call it "Sugar Cone Nachos". (They also have frozen yogurt, sherbert, and coconut-milk-based "vegan" ice cream.)