Jack Frost Ice Creamery

31 Division Street South, Kingsville, 519-733-5070

Date visited: August 28

We stumbled on Jack Frost Ice Creamery during a drive through Kingsville and just had to stop: its setting in a grand old house was irresistible, and a giant sign screaming ice cream seemed like a good omen.

Unfortunately for our purposes, ice cream is a red-headed stepchild here, taking a back seat to the gastropub side of the business. We arrived about 2:30, which we thought well after the lunch rush, but when we told the hostess we were just there for ice cream, she frowned and relegated us to some sofa-style seats outside the fence rather than a table on the patio or porch that we coveted. Maybe we were outside the time staff expected us; a notice on the website promises ice cream from 5 to 9 p.m., “all week long.”

Jack’s serves a variety of London Ice Cream flavours that changes each week. When we were there, the nine offerings included kid-friendly Spiderman as well as more sophisticated Old Tyme Butter Pecan.

We chose a cone of Blueberries & Cream and one of Acadian Vanilla. Both were good although they melted fast in the heat. The vanilla in particular was flavourful; the blueberry really lacked much blueberry. A single is $3, a double is $4, and Jack’d Up is $5, add 50 cents for a sugar cone or $1 for a waffle cone.

Jack’s ice cream menu also boasts a crème brulee, cupcake a la mode, banana split, a chevre brownie, sundaes and floats made with Pop Shoppe pop. By the way, when did Pop Shoppe go from the discount brand to premium?

Bottom line: We think we might want to visit another time for a meal, but wouldn’t recommend dropping in for ice cream until we figure out what went wrong on our visit. Their signage (see photo) raised our expectations.

Marta’s notes: I was disappointed that they didn’t have an ice cream bar, but I liked the ice cream.

Stop 26 Ice Cream

10585 Clairview Avenue, Windsor, 519-735-1355

Date visited: August 16, with special guests Opa, Ute, Katja, Jens, Lydia, Freya and Rhys

 

We made a stop at Stop 26 after a day at the beach—it is situated directly across Riverside Drive from Sandpoint Beach on Lake St. Clair, just within the Windsor city limits.

That location is obviously a big selling point for an ice cream stand and Stop 26 Ice Cream is an old-fashioned place, with a distinct air of summer. It’s a seasonal operation and feels like one, in a good way.

The interior is welcoming to customers who walk over from Sandpoint and has a few tables, with more tables and benches outside. There are about 30 flavours of scoop ice cream on offer, from Nestle, Chapman’s and London Ice Cream Co.

A kids scoop is $1.50, a single runs $2 and a double is $3.50. Splurging for a sugar cone will set you back another 15 cents; a waffle cone adds 50 cents. In addition, Stop 26 serves sundaes and banana splits, milkshakes, floats and slushies.

Our large group split, with a few opting for milkshakes rather than cones. Among the ice creams we ordered were St. Jacob’s Apple Pie, Maple Walnut and Caramel Cup. All were fresh and tasty—refreshing after a hot day at the beach.

Neighbourhood kids frequent the joint too. There were a number of bikes piled up outside.

Bottom line: Stop 26 is definitely a great way to cap off your Sandpoint experience.

Marta’s notes: It was good. You can eat ice cream on the beach, as long as the wasps don’t get it.

 

Waterfront Ice Cream

229 Dalhousie Street, Amherstburg, 519-736-5553

Date visited: August 7, with special guests Opa, Oma, Ute, Katja and Jens

Waterfront Ice Cream is another on our list of must-try parlours. Open March to October, it is located directly across from Navy Yard Park, and a short walk from the popular splash pad in Toddy Jones Park.

It offers a full range of ice creams – more than 50 flavours of hand scoop from Nestle and the London Ice Cream Co., soft serve, sundaes, splits, shakes, floats, slushes, sodas, and frozen yogurt with a variety of candy and fruit toppings.

There is plenty of seating, with eight tables inside, seven under an outdoor gazebo, three on the covered porch and three picnic tables with central patio umbrellas, but many clients prefer to take their treats on a stroll along the river through the lovely treed park.

Between us, we tried several cones, including Toasted Smores, Lemon Meringue, Cherry Cheesecake, Pistachio, Rainbow Sherbet, and Lime Creamcycle. All were good and creamy, and the store is so busy, they never have a chance to get stale. A kids-sized cone will set you back $2.21; a single is $2.85; a double is $3.95 and a triple is $4.42. Add 30 cents for a sugar cone or 60 cents for a sugar cone lined with sprinkles; a waffle cone is $1 extra.

The store is usually busy but well-staffed, especially on weekends, so no wait is too long.

Bottom line: Waterfront Ice Cream is a summer destination and a walk through Navy Yard Park makes it worth the drive.

Marta’s notes: “It’s yummy ice cream, especially the Toasted Smores ice cream. I think that was actual chocolate-covered graham crackers in there.”

Dairy Freez

368 West County Road 34, Northridge

Date visited: July 31, with special guests Opa, Ute, Katja, Jens, Lydia, Freya and Rhys

Why stop off at the Dairy Freez? We were on our way home after a day on a Point Pelee beach, natch. This is a tradition for Windsor families dating back to 1957, and Dairy Freez does not disappoint.

The drive-in stand serves vanilla soft-serve as well as sundaes (with fresh local fruit in season), milkshakes, and a full car-friendly menu centred on burgers and sandwiches, fries and onion rings.

Since the completion of the Highway 3 bypass, County Road 34 is no longer the fastest route between Windsor and Leamington—just the most interesting. If you have seen the Pixar movie Cars, you will recognize Dairy Freez as a place that would fit well in Radiator Springs.

There are picnic tables under roofs, but if the weather is fine, you’ll want to sit at one under a tree, or perhaps at a cafe table on the brick patio. There’s a large grass lawn for kids to play on away from the road, as well as a small wooded area behind for them to explore.

Carhops will take your menu order and deliver it to your car or table, but if it’s busy (as it was on our visit – Sunday of a long weekend), you must order ice cream at the window and wait for it there.

Our large group ended up with eight cones. A quite-substantial baby-size runs $1.65; small is $2.15; medium is $2.65 and large is $3.15. I have seen people order medium and large cones but never witnessed anyone finish one. I believe it would be impossible to eat more than half before it melts entirely. A chocolate dip adds another 25 cents; dipped in chocolate and nuts adds 40 cents.

Dairy Freez is one of the places that inspired us to start this blog; we waited this late in the season to go because we wanted to take our visitors from BC. They seemed to appreciate the gesture.

Marta’s notes: The ice cream is yummy. The French fries are yummy. The onion rings are yummy.

Marta likes to dip french fries into her ice cream.

 

Beachside Eats and Treats

Jackson Street, Colchester

Date visited: July 23, with special guest Grandma

We stopped by Beachside Eats and Treats during our Explore the Shore tour, a day on which we tried four different yummy ice creams along County Road 50, the former Highway 18A.

The new ice cream stand at Colchester Harbour is part of an upgrade to the Lake Erie beach, as an effort by the town to recapture this resort’s glory days. If the menu looks like it was transplanted from a Dairy Queen, there’s a good reason. It was!

Beachside serves DQ-style soft ice cream in cones, sundaes or other forms, as well as frozen yogurt. For Explore the Shore, it gave away more than 1,000 free cones!

There is no indoor seating but several picnic tables; it’s a seasonal amenity to the neighbouring beach. A park atop the bluff features a splashpad and a large play structure in the shape of a pirate ship.

It was drizzly the day we were there, but we still had fun in the park and hope the beach draws crowds for years to come. Beachside will be a welcome source of eats and treats for those visitors.

Besides Beachside, our tour included a buy-one-get-one-free cones from Ure’s Country Kitchen’s 24 flavours of Nestle hard pack, 50-cent baby cones from the Village Country Store, and cones at Klassen’s Blueberries—Marta’s first taste of orange sherbet.


Beachside, as its name implies, overlooks the lake.

St. Joachim Diner and Big Scoop Ice Cream Parlour

2744 County Road 42, Lakeshore, 519-728-0919
Date visited: July 10

Located in the hamlet of St. Joachim in what used to be the Country Boy restaurant, the Big Scoop Ice Cream Parlour is situated at the rear of this diner. On our visit early on a Sunday afternoon, we entered a large dimly-lit space with a small ice cream bar tucked into one end.

The freezer holds 16 flavours of Nestle ice cream and a menu board offers a variety of specialties, including milkshakes and floats, slushes and sundaes. The servers double as wait staff for the diner, but appeared promptly to wait on us.

The Big Scoop name was well-earned. We each had a baby cone that was as big as a single any place else. The baby cone was $2.65, a single is $2.95 and a double is $3.65. The parlour does not stock sugar cones and serves flat-bottomed stubby cones.

We tried a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and the orange-licorice blend Tiger Tiger. Both were fine and as mentioned above, the portions were large. There were plenty of round wooden tables in the restaurant and a bench in the shade alongside the building overlooking the parking lot.

About a 40-minute drive from our downtown Windsor home, St. Joachim isn’t really a destination we will hit too often. It is on the way to Rochester Place golf course; we made the most of our afternoon with a walk through the Ruscom Shores Conservation Area.

Bottom line: The ice cream definitely seems like an afterthought to the much larger diner, and the dark tavern interior did not strike us as conducive to a family atmosphere. If we hadn’t been looking specifically for a site in the county’s north east corner, we could have given this a pass.

Marta’s notes: “It was awesome. I liked the variety of flavours they had.”

Freddy’s Park Stop

655 Point Pelee Drive, Leamington, 519-325-1257

Date visited: July 3

Freddy’s Park Stop is the last place to get ice cream before Point Pelee national park. It offers 32 flavours of Breyer’s hard pack as well as frozen yogurt, sundaes and other specialties, and is adjacent to a full-menu licensed restaurant with standard pub fare and a few dishes reflecting the Lebanese origins of the owners.

Breyer’s, like many ice cream manufacturers, has an unfortunate tendency towards the more-is-more school of design. The all-natural line it flogs in grocery stores features simple clean flavours like strawberry, butter almond, or four varieties of vanilla. For commercial service, though, it leans heavily on gimmicks: a lot of goo-filled chocolate cups with names like Hokey Pokey and Caramel Turtle. The further we get into this project, the less patience I have for these “loaded” flavours.

When in Rome, though, so we ordered Caramel Caribou – toffee ice cream with caramel ribbon and chocolate caramel cups – and Raspberry Bugaboo – black raspberry ice cream with fudge ripple and raspberry filled chocolate cups. I don’t know what I was expecting, but these were some over-sweet candy-crammed ice creams. Marta loved hers of course.

On the plus side, the servings were reasonably proportioned at $2.30 for a single cone. A double costs $3.20 and an upgrade to a waffle cone, waffle cup or sugar cone tacks on an extra 99 cents. Now waffle cones and cups hold more ice cream, so a premium is expected, but a buck more for a sugar cone is unconscionable. Nine weeks in, Freddy’s was the first place I didn’t spring for the sugar cone.

The setting is memorable, though – across the street from Lake Erie and from a public playground, Freddy’s makes the most of its location with a patio boasting a number of tables with comfortable chairs and big sun-screening umbrellas.

Bottom line: Freddy’s Park Stop is worth a stop after a hot day on the beach at Point Pelee and appears popular with its core clientele of cottagers.

Marta’s notes: I liked the ice cream and I liked being able to look at the water.