Chocolate Chip
Vanilla flavored ice cream with chocolate chips
Date Tried - November 6, 2022
Location - Home, on the stool closest to the window
Format - Half Gallon
Milkshake It? - No
Buy Again? - Yes
A butterfly landing effortlessly on a nearby flower;
Hearing your favorite song on the radio, from beginning to end;
A gentle, warm wind on a long summer night.
Stewart’s has a wide enough offering of in-your-face ice cream flavors that it can sometimes be easy to write off some of the simpler ones. Why buy Vanilla if you can buy Crumbs Along the Mohawk instead? Why settle for Chocolate if you can have Chocolate Caramel Tornado for the same price?
Well, Chocolate Chip proves that—at least in this case—simplicity is akin to excellence.
Their website description for Chocolate Chip reads “vanilla polkadotted with chocolate chips”, but this is a deception, whether or not it is intentionally misleading. The chocolate chips aren’t “polkadotted”—they are spread evenly and densely throughout, almost like muscular striations. Their pervasiveness alters the texture of the ice cream; “flecked” might be the right word.
Whatever you call it, it is objectively a good thing.
It’s not just the description. The photograph on their website (which is—consequently—copied and pasted above) is a false representation of the real world manifestation of Chocolate Chip. It makes me wonder if, at some point, Stewart’s changed their Chocolate Chip recipe and failed to update the corresponding promotional materials. As the reader, I suspect that this is where you might assume that I—the author—might insert my own photograph as picture proof that what I claim is true.
But I am not here to do that. I am here to write approximately five hundred thoughtful words weekly on ice cream and the human emotions that surround it.
Let these words be proof enough or let them be nothing, the door remains open to skeptics.
And now…a brazen assertion: Despite not having a responsibility to do so, Stewart’s Chocolate Chip presents with a refined, European sensibility. And, for that reason, it should be renamed from Chocolate Chip to “Stracciatella”—a more fitting and stately denomination. In fact, I’ll take the assertion one step further…
As of mid-December, there were three offerings in the Stewart’s canon that fall under the “gelato” umbrella (clearly an attempt to appeal to a more highfalutin audience.) Stewart’s should increase that number to four and Chocolate Chip—reimagined as Stracciatella—should be allowed to graduate from the standard ice cream class to the elite—and undoubtedly somewhat elitist—ranks of the gelato line.
In the meantime, I consider it a Top 5 flavor and you should consider doing the same.