9 hours ago
INdulge: It's simply too hot. These ice creams were the best things I ate in Indy this week.
Well, folks, I hate to overreact, but I think it's time to call it a wrap on summer.
Less than a week after the season officially began, Indianapolis has endured multiple heat advisories and watched the Pacers lose Game 7 of the NBA Finals in just about the most agonizing way possible.
My disdain for summer is well-documented at this point, but so is my resolve to push through it with the help of empty calories. Needing a frosty assist more than ever, for this week's INdulge I toured our sun-beaten city for:
In the time since the atmosphere started feeling like the steam that belches out of manhole covers, I've visited three Indianapolis ice cream shops in search of relief. Late last week, when the heat was just setting in and hope for a Pacers championship still sprang eternal, I began my quest with a cup of ube ice cream at Howdy Homemade downtown.
Howdy, which shares space with Needler's Fresh Market at 320 N. New Jersey St., is one of six United States locations of the Texas-based mini-chain. Its silky-smooth take on the purple yam native to South Asia and Oceana is faintly fruity with a nutty taste strikingly similar to pistachio. I suspect a medical professional would advise against hydrating oneself by consuming frozen dairy instead of, say, water, but Howdy's ube ice cream is a remarkably refreshing and much better-tasting option.
By the time I reached the second stop on my dairy drive, I was a different man. A broken one. Pacers star point guard Tyrese Haliburton had torn his Achilles tendon mere minutes into what seriously looked like a title-winning effort and I, a die-hard Pacers fan of roughly 40 days, was absolutely gutted.
Prioritizing comfort above all else, a few days later I took a short trip up to SoBro, where longtime Indy ice cream vendor Lick recently opened a new shop just off the Monon Trail and 52nd Street. There, I snagged a scoop of blueberry and sweet corn ice cream.
Lick's ode to summer produce is a pale purple blend speckled with blueberries and hunks of the shop's house-made corn cookies. The blueberry is pleasant if not especially strong, while the cookie chunks capture the butter-doused richness and unmistakable grit of a slab of cornbread. Perhaps I'm just another Hoosier in the pocket of Big Corn, but I find the mere idea of putting cornbread in ice cream frankly beautiful, and Lick's rendition was no exception.
For one final affront to my arteries, I shot down Interstate 65 to Paradise Mx in Southport and purchased the closest thing to a pharmaceutical-grade mood booster I could find within the parlor's freezer case. That was Paradise Mx's Gansito, vanilla ice cream blended with chunks of the Mexican snack cake of the same name.
For the uninitiated, Gansito (Spanish for 'little goose') is a small sponge cake topped with artificially flavored strawberry jelly and cream, all coated in a mixture approximating chocolate. Paradise Mx's twist on the packaged sweet is an all-out blitz on the dopamine receptors — an uber-dense, spoon-bending swirl with a degree of palatability typically found in the cellophane-wrapped creations of multinational food corporations.
After all that, it's worth noting my ice cream escapades only briefly cooled me off. Ninety-five-degree humidity will have that effect. Nor did all that ice cream consumption much alleviate the pain that, for some cruel, unfeeling reason, tends to accompany sports fandom.
Ultimately, I suppose only time (and another miraculous Finals run) can heal all wounds. I'm just saying, if you have a lot of time on your hands, there are worse things to fill it with than ice cream.
What: Ube ice cream, $4, Blueberry and sweet corn ice cream, $5, and Gansito ice cream, $4.30
Where: Howdy Homemade, 370 N. New Jersey St., (317) 397-0008, Lick, (317) 979-0237, 1101 E. 52nd St., Paradise Mx, 7045 Emblem Drive, (317) 629-8450,
In case that's not your thing: If you aren't looking for ice cream at one of these shops, you're in the wrong will return July 11. Have a wonderful Fourth of July.
