Soft Serve Sundae

I was visiting the Scituate Lighthouse for photography reasons - it's a small lighthouse and rocky beach with extensive free parking, and lots of boats, gulls, and cormorants. Dribbles is a tiny corner ice cream shop a mile and a half south of the lighthouse along the coastal road, so it was a convenient "on my way out of town" stop for me, but would also be very convenient if you were walking or biking around downtown Scituate.

The shop is literally one corner room of the building, and appears to be even smaller than their outdoor picnic bench space. (It seems to be a secondary "near the water/near the tourist area" storefront for the main Dribbles in North Scituate, which is in a strip mall a mile and a half inland, and also serves sandwiches.) They have plenty of parking, shared with a bunch of other businesses and a local grocery store, as well as their own bike rack right next to the seating area.

They have hard ice cream, and a dozen flavors of soft serve (including dip cones - not just the usual chocolate, but cherry and blue raspberry dips.) They also have a few flavors each of Frozen Yogurt, Sherbet, and Sorbet.

They have a half dozen Specialty Sundaes (including S'mores, Cookie Monster, and Banana Split) and a traditional build-your-own Sundae (normal ice cream or soft-serve). Toppings are split into Candy (including Gummi Bears), Fruit (including Strawberries and... Walnuts?), Sprinkles, Sauces, and "Additional" (Krunch Kote and Crushed Cone.)

They also have Frappes, Freezes, Ice Cream Sodas, Root Beer Float, Raspberry Lime Rickey, and "Flurries (AKA Blizzard)" - since those are basically "softserve plus a topping, blended" they even list a "Gummi Bear Flurry" specifically (or "build your own" with up to two toppings.) They also have a "Creamsicle" - orange sherbet and vanilla ice cream blended with seltzer (distinct from an orange Freeze which wouldn't have the vanilla ice cream.)

First Visit

I had a large cup of "Death By Chocolate" and "Butter Crunch" with chocolate jimmies. The first thing that stands out is that it was served in a 16oz clear plastic drink cup - great for photography, maybe also a space saver in their tiny shop? (Or maybe they just ran out.) The other sizes were also served in clear plastic. The other oddity was that the chocolate jimmies were smaller diameter and shorter - same texture and taste, but it might the ice cream look bigger in the photographs if you don't have other references.

Both ice creams were rich and dense. The "Death By Chocolate" had a seriously dark chocolate flavor (even though it had a more milk-chocolate color overall) and had fudge and brownie bits and chocolate chunks. The "Butter Crunch" actually had a buttery flavor to the ice cream and good crunchable brickle bits.

Next Visit

The Creamsicle drink is high on my list, but the photographer in me wants a picture of a blue raspberry dip cone - perhaps I'll compromise and get the dip cone with Creamsicle soft serve. If they're open in the fall, the Maple Walnut is also tempting.

There are two places called Dandi-Lyons, a couple of miles apart; today we're talking about "Dandi Lyons Ice Cream Flowers" (that's what the sign says which has amused me for years - the artwork even has a flower growing into the letters) on 28 in Reading. Plenty of parking and a dozen picnic benches, 3 ordering windows on one side and a delivery window around the corner, and traditional yellow flourescent lighting. (There's also a section of the building which might have once been the flower shop but seems clean but closed.) Still open until 9pm mid-September.

First Visit

Dandi-Lyons menu is mostly classics, though it does have some highlights (and an explainer list by one of the menus); "Crunch-a-saurus" - blue Vanilla with chocolate-covered rice krispies - is one of the more unusual sounding items. I went with Chocolate Overload and Totally Turtle.

Chocolate Overload was a rich dark chocolate "with stuff in it", including brownies. The ice cream itself had a legitimately dark-chocolate flavor to it and was quite creamy. It also has an entirely normal color, when not under yellow flourescent lighting; in future visits I will have to see if my phone can be convinced to do manual color balance, the automatics are doing it no favors here.

The "Totally Turtle" photographs much more appealingly under my car's white LED interior lighting - more importantly, it has a really nice butterscotch swirl as well as crunchy pecan and other mixins. The butterscotch is also available on their ice cream sundaes - they do soft-serve sundaes, and I'm not sure if that's unusual or if I've just missed it before, but it's an interesting novelty.

They also have frappes, "flurrie", slush, and "hard yogurt." They also specifically have Chocolate and Rainbow jimmies (I haven't been tracking carefully enough to measure where the Jimmies vs. Sprinkles battle lines are drawn, perhaps next year) and Crunch Coat, as well as three different flavors of dip cone - so for a future visit I will probably either try a dip cone or the crunch coat on something. For hard ice cream, I'll probably go back for Totally Turtle, though Heath Bar Crunch and Crunch-a-saurus also look interesting.