Waltham
Searching by town name (since google maps search is significantly worse than MetaCarta was a decade ago1) turned up another secret Waltham ice cream shop. Lizzy's is in downtown Waltham, right on Moody Street (there's another storefront in Harvard Square, according to their web page.) Since it's in a Very Urban spot, there is neither outdoor seating nor shop-specific parking - Google Automotive even popped up a novel "parking at your destination will be difficult" warning (turned out to not be a problem2, but it emphasized how different this kind of spot is from my usual suppliers in the "Western Suburbs".)
The shop itself is long and narrow, with half a dozen four-seat tables towards the back and another half dozen two-seaters near the register. (Probably not a good coffee+laptop space, but The Common Good Co. is a "coffee and coworking space" a block away if that's what you're looking for.) The adjacent store front is also theirs, and has about twice as much seating - but it's a "party event" space, which is an interesting choice (on this random September evening it was clean and well-lit but empty, suggesting it was kept ready and actually gets reserved.)
Lizzy's mainly does "real" ice cream, but has yogurt, sorbet, sherbet (w/dairy), vegan, and no sugar added (Splenda™) options; they also have an "Adult" category that I haven't seen before, apparently flavored with Actual Booze? They also offer a broad range of toppings including Andes Mints and Brownie Bites - while straddling the cultural divide by having Chocolate Jimmies but Rainbow Sprinkles.
They also have a "5 Flavor Sampler" (what West Side Creamery calls a "flight") as well as Sundaes, Frappes (including Adult Frappes), Smoothies, and a full coffee bar including Chai Latte, Affogato, and Bailey's Affogato. (They also snuck a Raspberry Lime Rickey into the cold drinks section.)
First Visit
I got a large (which was generous even by Massachusetts standards.) The top half was Charles River Crunch - a more "honestly local" flavor than you might expect, they're only 1000ft from the south bank of the river - which was a Dark Chocolate with bits of Almond Toffee. Good crunch and an honestly dark chocolate - not over the top, but "definitely dark not milk" on first taste. (That suggests their "Chocolate Orgy" is worth a try, but as documented it might be the same base but with chocolate chunks instead of toffee; one might also argue that the name alone should put it on the "adult flavors" list, but no.)
The lower half was Mocha Chocolate Lace, which caught my attention because of some obscure history: one of my early exposures to Serious Ice Cream was Dr. Mike's in Bethel CT (I hadn't planned to include them on this site but their history page says that they sourced their ice cream from "a secret dairy in Massachusetts", so maybe they do qualify.) Dr. Mike's was specifically famous for ice cream with Chocolate Lace mixed in - as described at the time, a Russian concoction based originally on drizzling caramel and chocolate into snow.3 Sure enough, this flavor is a tasty Mocha (both the coffee and the chocolate parts come through, which might be easier with ice cream than with actual hot mocha) with bits of nostalgia, err I mean bits of Chocolate Lace, mixed in for a very sweet crunch (moderated by the dark chocolate coating.)
Other Items
They have a self-serve freezer in the front for pre-made ice cream cakes (mostly online orders) and pints/quarts/gallons, like Bedford Farms does. (The website mentions pastries, which I didn't get a picture of, but there was a pastry cabinet next to the register; if they get them fresh in the morning it's sensible that they were out by late in the day, I did arrive after dinnertime.)
The extra tables in the front seem to have ended up the de-facto "kids section" - probably because it's the only area in the shop with room for a stroller - but it also has a Connect-4 game which I've only seen before (although at much larger scale) at Kimball Farm. I guess after more than thirty ice cream shops even the really weird things start to repeat...
Finally, as a photographer I have to point out the ice cream "portraits" on the walls. They also have a cow statue - as far as I've been able to research, it is not part of the world famous Cow Parade but maybe this "[sculpt] me like one of your french girls" pose wouldn't fit, CowParade doesn't really have an Adult category...
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More than a decade - Nokia bought MetaCarta in 2010; part of the difference is that MetaCarta was specifically about finding exact keywords in precise geographic regions (named or rectangular), and even then google was much more about "fuzzy" answers; today google isn't even trying for that kind of precision. (Biased, of course, I was a senior engineer at MetaCarta...) ↩
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In fact, if you go south on Moody from Lizzy's, skip Walnut street and turn right on Chestnut, there's a large public lot mid-block on Chestnut (after the Patel Brothers grocery lot) which uses the PayByPhone app from 8am-6pm, but is free after 6pm. (Parking on Moody Street itself was definitely implausible at 7pm, though there were some spots near the river; Google Automotive wasn't technically wrong, it just didn't consider municipal lots.) ↩
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The history page above credits "Steve Bray at his candy factory in Bethel" but that's enough to find a Danbury News-Times article that confirms both halves of the story - "a Russian immigrant named Eugenia Tay" originally made the treat on cold winter days and constructed a machine to produce it - see US Patent 3,958,018 from 1976 with excellent woodcut-style diagrams of the mechanism - according to the article, the machine (and business) were purchased as part of an expansion of Bray Chocolates in the 1980's; Hauser Chocolatier then bought out Bray in 2005, including the Lace product line, and still sell Chocolate Lace today (along with Dan's Chocolates and Tom and Sally's.) ↩
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.
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While the ice cream windows are one entire wall of the building, the rest of the building is a Deli and Farmstand, with a sandwich menu including a tasty but slightly-too-early to-be-seasonally-appropriate "Gobbler" sandwich - mid-September is not Fall! ↩
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Hardy Pond is about ⅓ of a mile east of Pizzi's, though hopefully only the name is local. ↩
Stumbled on The Creamery while looking for ice cream around Home Depot. It apparently just opened a few months back and it's directly adjacent to the Brandeis/Roberts commuter rail stop.
Aside from ice cream they have a range of ice cream sodas, floats, and a milkshake (not a frappe, oh no) as well as a range of hot and cold coffee drinks (specifically from an espresso machine, so your "normal" coffee will be an Americano, but that's fine.) They also have Raspberry Lime Rickeys - not my thing but a few friends are fans so I have to point it out.
The thing they are really into is Sundaes, nearly half of the menu board is an amazing range of ice cream sundae concepts. I was waffling between the Peanut Butter Pretzel Sundae, the Chocolate Lover's Dream Sundae, and the Waffle Sundae (ha ha) when my friend pointed out that they have a Baklava Sundae and I'd missed out on the Baklava Ice Cream at New City last week. It was amazing.
Baklava Sundae
(This was a Large) Loaded with pistachios, walnuts, and honey, but they also had small-cannoli-shaped baklava "tubes" which they sliced disks off of to include in the sundae. Of particular novelty: they started by dumping toppings into the cup, then added ice cream, then the "top" toppings, so that when you get down to the bulk ice cream layer (which, don't get me wrong, was a good vanilla in it's own right), "surprise!" another layer of crunchy bits to finish it off.
Next Time
As a First Visit, I don't yet have an "if you're picking something up for me" preference yet, but I certainly want to try their Tiramisu Sundae and Waffle Sundae (waffle-cone bits, should be Very Crunchy) but wouldn't object to any of the other 14 Sundaes on the current menu (well, the Tropical Paradise Sundae appears to be Very Coconut so it's going to be pretty far down the list, but it has Mango! so it's not off the list entirely.)
They've only been open since May but it looks like they've got a good spot so I wish them luck!
