Last year we were really excited about the new fancy sciency ice cream shop in Wicker Park called iCream. (They use liquid nitrogen to freeze the ingredients in some magic way I never understood, to make ice cream.)

The reviews were mixed, mostly due to the crowds and the fact that their big machine was often broken. The reviews did not really deter us and we finally found a good weekend to head to Wicker Park… only to find the store was closed until spring while they worked on their machinery malfunction issues.

A couple of weeks ago, I started seeing reviews again and it looked like their machine problems had been solved. Yay! And what great timing, since my cousin (owner of Hamburger Calculus) was in town and we were looking for some place to meet. What better place for weirdo food people who don’t really know each other to meet up?

The machines do work. I am not sure how they work, that whole science is magic thing, ya know. But, they work with every day Kitchen-aid mixers and they work very very well.

I ordered a coffee flavored ice cream with bananas and caramel - and I ordered it pink. The taste - EXCELLENT. It’s oddly disconcerting to eat pink coffee flavored ice cream. A young man sitting on a stool behind me had peach ice cream that was… green. It had chocolate bits in it too so to look at it you’d have thought it was mint chocolate chip. Imagine that crazy disjointed experience - it should be mint chocolate chip and yet it is… peach? Fabulous!

TW and RJ ordered the pudding (Chocolate and vanilla) and they both enjoyed it quite a bit. Prince J also ordered coffee and wanted his red but it turned out more pink than red. My cousin ordered chocolate (which can’t be colored properly so it just looked chocolate) with nutella and hazelnut and reeses pieces and I don’t know what else. It was surprisingly good (yes he let me taste it!) considering I don’t much like hazelnut and really dislike nutella. J, my cousin’s g/f, ordered a pomegranate (but not pom/pear) with mangos and blackberries and may graham crackers. She didn’t get any color with hers so it was a weird off white tannish color. Fascinating!

On the way home from the Flea Circus, we stopped at The Village Creamery on Waukegan & Oakton primarily because my cousin had recently blogged about visiting the Skokie store and we hadn’t gone yet…

We should have planned to eat dinner there and have dessert because there’s nothing better than a plate of Pancit but I had forgotten they had actual food and it didn’t hit me until we’d already started ordering our ice cream. Ah well, we’ll go back.

Anyway, about the ice cream… there were too many flavors I wanted to try and I was there with too many people who weren’t interested in trying unusual flavors so I couldn’t even bargain for a lick of theirs. I mean really, who goes to a cool ice cream shop with all of those interesting flavors and then orders… chocolate… banana… rocky road… java chip… seriously. I am not taking those people back to the Village Creamery until they agree to step outside the norm.

Thankfully I had TW and she ordered a scoop of Avocado. Awesome. I liked it quite a bit and would order it again. No problem.

I ordered a milkshake made from Maize… it was good but a little too vanilla-y and not quite maize-y enough.

I bought a pint of Queso (with pieces of Kraft American!) Ice Cream to take home…. I’m having a tiny bowl now. Mmmmm, cheese!