Dip Cone

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.

Pizzi Farm in Waltham turned up as a surprisingly nearby option, for a place I'd never heard of (or accidentally driven past) before. They're sort of a "near miss" from some major routes - they're about halfway between Trapelo and Totten Pond roads, and halfway between Wyman St/128 and Lexington St. If you're on the section of 128 south of 2 and you see that hillside encrusted with large shiny office buildings? They're half a mile behind those.

Just because I hadn't been there, doesn't mean they're unknown - possibly because they were still open late even though it's September, there were twenty people on line ahead of me at 8:30pm. I don't think any place I've written about has been that busy, short of a downtown Boston J.P. Licks after a game.

They had four windows open and were serving reasonably efficiently - I still had a 15m wait, under a minute per person, but that shouldn't scare you off. I went back the next afternoon and there was only a ten person line; according to their website this place does stay open all winter.¹

First Visit

They have a lengthy menu, including Campfire S'mores and Chocolate Raspberry Truffle. I went with Chocoholic and Graham Central Station on my return visit, but got distracted by their soft serve - I don't think I've ever seen Creamsicle soft serve before!

Unfortunately, if you look closely, that machine is already switched over to fall flavors - Maple and Pumpkin (presumably a Maple-Pumpkin Twist given how those are configured.) So I went with my classic, a vanilla soft-serve chocolate dip cone.

Yes, it's pretty drippy as-served but that's pretty standard for dip cones.

Second Visit

I don't usually go right back to a place, but poking around the map I discovered Prospect Hill Park was nearby and had some interesting looking hill-climbing trails, so it seemed like a good combination - a big serving of ice cream and then some exploration. (Fall foliage in New England is unevenly distributed, so it turned out to be a photographer's dream combination of Sunset and Autumn Leaves along some otherwise sparsely used trails.)

The Graham Central Station was great, I think it's a relatively new flavor but I'm happy to see it more places. The Chocoholic had a nice dark chocolate flavor to it, but was a little less creamy than I expected, at least to my Tosci's-attuned tastes.

They also have Sundaes, Ice Cream Sodas, Frappes, Smoothies, Raspberry Lime Ricky, and Slush; they also have something blizzard-like called (appropriately, and I assume non-trademarkedly) "The Nor'easter".

I think for my next visit it's a tossup between trying the Maple soft-serve and their Hardy Pond Mudd² flavor, though the Coffee Fudge and Strawberry Cheesecake also look tempting.

Cedar Hill Dairy Joy (in Weston) is a roadside drive-up (window service) ice cream shop that also does hotdogs and hamburgers. Good soft-serve dip cones too. Popular spot for convertibles and other shiny cars; has two outdoor patios and picnic benches under the nearby trees.

If you're picking something up for me: that probably won't work because what I always get from here is a vanilla soft-serve cone dipped in chocolate (medium-sized, it is impossible to finish a large without wearing most of it and even a medium is pushing it) and dip cones are basically untransportable.