At Red Wagon Creamery, the ice cream flavors seem like they came straight from Willy Wonka. I’m not one to knock a classic ice cream flavor — because truly I do love the Prince Puckler classics — but this creamery is here to challenge everything you knew about the favorite frozen treat.
Red Wagon Creamery was a traveling ice cream cart before permanently settling in its current downtown location one year ago. At this much larger location, it is able to feature several rotating ice cream flavors on top of five signature “base” flavors. This time around the headline-buster is “Beet It,” a roasted beet and chocolate chip ice cream, and “All Hail the Bee,” a chocolate chip and candy honeycomb ice cream made with local Glorybee honey. Honey isn’t so strange, but beets?
“The earthiness of the beets pumps up the mouth’s receptiveness to chocolate. There are a good number of recipes for chocolate cakes that have a little beet in there for the flavor and the color,” said Stuart Phillips, the co-owner and husband of the chef. “I’ll admit, at first I was a little skeptical … but when I tried it, I was like, ‘Wow.’”
According to employee Joel Watson, there’s no shortage of skepticism when it comes to the stranger flavors.
“I’m not forcing ice cream on anyone, but usually all you have to do is ask if they want a sample,” Watson said. “It really is good, people are just put off by something like beets.”
Conceptualizing an alternative ice cream flavor isn’t as difficult as you might imagine. Co-owner Emily Phillips was a chef for 10 years before opening Red Wagon. At Red Wagon, she tries to take dishes she’s made in the past and translate them into ice cream.
There’s a trial and error period, much like all great creations.
“We test our creations on our family but… the dirty little secret in food business is that you test on your customers,” Stuart said. “You get it out there, they try it and either they like or they don’t. If they don’t you shrug and say, ‘Maybe we don’t make that one again.’”
Stuart is guilty of one such flavor, a twist on their popular Buttered Corn flavor and a hop onto the bacon-bandwagon — Breakfast Bacon and Grits. The bacon just didn’t work and the grits were too… well, gritty. The resulting taste and texture were less than desirable and the concoction didn’t even make it to the public.
Ellie Phillips, Stuart and Emily’s 13 year-old daughter, has some ideas of her own.
“I’ve thought of one… carrot and peanut butter. But it never made it out there, obviously,” Ellie said.
By looking at Red Wagon’s “Hall of Flavors,” it doesn’t don’t just stop at your typical dessert flavors either. There’s clearly no shortage of creativity when there are flavors like Olive Oil, Roasted Strawberry and Basil Jam. Buttered Corn (honey butter swirl with sweet corn), “Norm” (wheat beer, pretzels, chocolate and caramel) and Brieberry Almond Surprise (brie cheese, almonds and vodka-soaked cranberries).
Well damn, that’s a mouthful.