Review of Herrel’s Ice Cream

I was driving with my friends to Northampton for dinner on your average Wednesday night. I had been asked to review a restaurant on the Amherst Indicator’s dime, and had planned to go to Thai Garden. But in the car, my friend casually mentioned the fact that we should go to this ice cream spot called Herrell’s.            
Considering the fact that I have a combination of short-term memory loss, attention-deficiency disorder, and a generally scatter-brained lifestyle, I nonchalantly asked “Harold’s??” The reaction was thunderous. Both of my friends’ voices raised about twenty levels (the friend in the passenger seat has a particularly booming voice) as they began to rave about this Herrell’s, not Harold’s, one of the top ice cream destinations in the country.
 
 

So as delicious as the food was at Thai Garden, my mind and taste buds were elsewhere. After we paid the check, we hastily drove to our final destination.  We walk into a brightly lit space with tables and booths that go up by steps, and on the left was the counter where all of the magic happens. Up above eye level were suspended menus with endless list of ice cream flavors: burnt sugar and butter, purple cow, chocolate chip cookie dough, chocolate pudding, and the list went on. There were also options for sundaes, swirlies, cones, cups, milkshakes and more. I personally chose to order the Peanut Butter and Jelly flavored ice cream, after taking a sample taste.
 
 
The sentence above does not fully emulate my experience when I took that first bite. I’m not actually a huge ice cream person, but I wanted to live there forever. I was so full after my dinner that I’m sure I experienced a mild case of heart burn, and let’s just say I was sucking in enough that I would have a six-pack by the next morning. But boy did I have room for this ice cream. I felt like I was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The idea that I had in my mind was that it would taste like a scoop of peanut butter and a scoop of jelly, but frozen. Yet somehow, it tasted as though the flavor of the bread was included, without any disgusting chunk of frozen bread. My body had developed something of a fever from all the food from dinner, but this ice cream acted as the perfect medicine as it cooled my body and balanced all of the savory with the sweet. It was literally a PB&J but in ice cream form.
           
 
But let’s take a quick commercial break to my friends who were also having food-gasms on either side of me. One of my friends finished his and then finished mine, and my other friend, after trying mine, was struggling to try to put into words what the peanut butter and jelly flavor was doing for her…
 
 
Herrell’s is ABSOLUTELY worth the visit. As I write this article, I am actually figuring out a time with those same friends to go back. The hours are Sunday-Thursday, Noon-11:00PM and Friday-Saturday, Noon-11:30 PM, a perfect nightcap. To try all 200 flavors? Challenge accepted.