Holden

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...)