Eating: Rancatore's and Herrell's

I'm going to start including posts about eating ice cream along with posts about making it.

On Sunday, I went to the Red Sox game with a couple friends. On the way home, I stopped at Rancatore's and Herrell's. Both have been visited by the people at Roadfooddigest.com as part of their New England Ice Cream Tour.

At Rancatore's, I had a medium. I went went with bittersweet chocolate and chocolate banana. The bittersweet chocolate was excellent. An outstanding ice cream. It was rich in chocolate flavor. The texture was smooth and creamy. It was nicely dense, too. The chocolate banana was also very good. It struck a nice balance between the two flavors. There were nice bits of banana, too. I don't always care for bits of banana but they seemed to add to this ice cream. It wasn't nearly as chocolaty as the bittersweet chocolate but that was a good thing. It made it easier to balance the banana against it.

Dutch chocolate orange caught my eye at Herrell's. So, I had a medium with that flavor and mint chocolate chip. I don't know if it was the recipe or just the combination of flavors but I didn't like this as much as I thought I would. Still, it was good. It had a really bright orange taste and a good chocolate taste. They just weren't working as well together as I hoped. The mint chocolate chip veered towards medicinally mint more than I like. Not unenjoyable but it could've been better.

I would definitely recommend Rancatore's. I'd love to go back to Herrell's and try some different flavors. Parking at the Allston location of Herrell's (there's three locations, I believe) was a pain. I eventually parked in a lot for Rite Aid which had signs everywhere proclaiming that if you so much as let your gaze wander outside of the parking lot, your car would be towed. I decided I could risk leaving it there for 15 minutes. Just don't tell Katie.