By OWEN MORRIS
About a week ago, I received a press release from Shatto Farms announcing the launch of Shatto ice cream. I'm a fan of Shatto milk, which completely changed the way this city boy thinks about milk and how it tastes. Unfortunately the press release wasn't big on specifics, only saying, "Shatto Ice Cream will be offered to all stores that carry Shatto Milk products over the course of the coming months."
This weekend I went looking for Shatto ice cream and came up empty handed at three grocery stores. It was then that I fired off an e-mail to owner Leroy Shatto and asked him about availability.
He wrote back to say the ice cream is "currently in five stores and today I will be personally taking it to three more. We are attempting to do a controlled roll out of the ice cream to ensure we are able to keep up with demand and also to ensure we are able to provide each store with personal attention as they begin to offer it to their customers. We have offered the ice cream to each and every store that carries our milk... If customers would like it in their store, they just need to suggest that to their store manager."
Leroy also told me I could find it at the Price Chopper at 135th Street. I headed south and picked up a pint each of vanilla and chocolate (strawberry is coming soon.) Coincidentally, about two hours later a friend called to say he had just seen it at the Liberty Hy-Vee where he shops and had picked up a pint of the chocolate.
Costing north of $3.50 per pint, Shatto Ice Cream is going for the same market as the premium players like Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's, two ice creams I'm too familiar with. Since it was pretty hot out and 135th Street is far from my home, I ended up tearing open both pints in my car and eating them on the drive home.
I tried the vanilla first. It tastes similar to Häagen-Dazs in that the emphasis is on the cream and not on the vanilla. The cream flavor is rich and takes a couple of seconds to fill the mouth. The texture, though, is much lighter than Häagen-Daz or most other store-bought ice creams, which I'd guess to be the result of very little overrun.
The chocolate flavoring does the exact opposite. This is not a strong chocolate flavor like you'll get from a Ben & Jerry's. In fact, the flavor it most reminded me of was the frozen malts at the Royals' games. The flavor tastes the same (or at least very similar) to the chocolate in Shatto's chocolate milk but without the richness. I asked my friend in Liberty what he thought. "Not a real overpowering chocolate flavor," he said. "Kinda humdrum, actually."
These are just some first tastes, and I imagine both ice creams will keep getting slight improvement tweaks as Shatto starts to bump up production. Both are definitely worth trying and local businesses are always worth supporting. So if Shatto ice cream isn't in your local grocery store by next week, follow Leroy's advice and ask the manager for it. Chances are within a week, Leroy will be delivering it personally.
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I tried the Shatto's chocolate ice cream about a month ago that I bought at HyVee in Prairie Village...I really try to support local businesses so, I was gung-ho. Not worth the money or effort to find it. I called Shatto's to put in my "2 cents worth" and the lady who answered the phone could not have cared any less about the comment. Too bad for that response, even an I'm sorry would have made me try the product again!
Now that you mention it Venus, I remember seeing something about that cheese too a while back and thinking "damn I need to get that." I might have to go on a reconnaissance mission.
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