"A New York Treasure" --Village Voice

Just Desserts

harlmet

Brandon McCarthy: stud. 

[Photo Credit: Danny Ghitis via MPD]

Categories:  1: Featured  Game Recap  Yankees

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9 comments

1 rbj   ~  Aug 21, 2014 4:37 pm

And dang, David Price tosses a 1 hit, no walk, 1 unearned run complete game -- and takes the loss.

2 Chyll Will   ~  Aug 21, 2014 5:12 pm

Speaking of ice cream, my roommate was pressing to go to this ice cream stand in Somers in upper Westchester that a couple of her co-workers highly recommended, so we went last Saturday to King Kone.

I remember when my family and I first moved to the Mid-Hudson Valley in '79 and we passed a King Kone in Fishkill on the highway; we went there quite a few times before they left a couple of years later and was replaced by Karl Ehmer's meat market (which has been replaced within the last few years by 5 Guys and a couple of boutique stores). At any rate, I reserved my expectations knowing that my childhood memories of King Kone would not have much relevance to the one we would encounter.

This one turned out to be a holdover from an era before interstate highways; it was actually a roadside stand that looked like a dilapidated ripoff of Carvel or more appropriately Dairy Queen. My roommate ordered a burger and fries (which were predictably terrible in the end), and I ordered a king-sized twist.

Now, my notion of the amount of ice cream you actually got with a kid-size, medium, large and king size was that the kid size was like the small size from a Mr. Frosty truck, small was probably a 5-oz dish, medium 7-8 oz, large 12 oz and King size 16 oz. So when the cashier, a young lady in her teens, handed me a 12-oz dish of chocolate/vanilla, I was rather disappointed. King size?

"Is that really the largest you have?" I asked, nonplussed. "Oh, the largest we have is the King size," she replied. "But I asked for the king size," I said. "Oh I'm sorry, I thought I heard you say small! I'll be right back."

I thought about it for an instant, but decided I'd go with what I asked for; after all it's the principle that counts and she was ready to make amends. But that small seemed to be about the right size now that I thought about it, why shouldn't I just stick with...

A smiling young man's head popped out of the cashier's window, brandishing the new dish. "Here's your king size, sire!" he beamed. "Quite a difference, huh?"

The dish of ice cream... if you look at the picture above and multiply that by at least four or five, you begin to get an idea of what I now faced.

"Yeah, it is," I replied with a mixture of shock, confusion and maybe a pang of helplessness.

I accepted the weighty load with two hands and carried it away from the stand, thinking about my nephew who was about to go away to college and how much fun it would be if he were here with us at this very moment. I spotted my roommate waiting for her food by a picnic table next to the stand; she had seen this whole thing happen and kept a straight face the whole time.

"Gerlyne," I blurted out tersely, "I'm really gonna need your help on this!"

I'm ashamed to admit that between the two of us, we only managed to finish half of the bowl before discarding the rest. I regretted Nephew not being there, because he'd have gladly scarfed down the rest of it if he didn't order one of his own. But hey, on the weekends you live and learn. My roommate learned not to take anything her co-workers said or recommended for granted, and I learned the true meaning of King Kone.

3 coleman42   ~  Aug 21, 2014 6:20 pm

[2] Nice story. I pass King Kone frequently while driving to/from various grandchild baseball and soccer games. However, I've never stopped for a Kone because the place is always very crowded. Sometimes the lines spill out onto Route 100. If anyone wants to sample their offerings, they are at the intersection of Rt 35 and Rt 100 in Somers (a few miles north of Muscoot Farm.

4 Chyll Will   ~  Aug 21, 2014 7:35 pm

[3] Thanks. The line actually moved fairly quickly even though it seemed long. They don't mess around there. The ice cream's worth stopping for there; next time I go by there I'd like to check out the tavern next door; it has to have better fare at least (hopefully).

I've driven out of my way for Holy Cow Ice Cream in Red Hook (northern Dutchess County, not Brooklyn) and the lines are super-long there. My family discovered Holy Cow in the 80s on one of our family camping excursions and fell in love with their generous offerings. It used to be sort-of a hidden gem in that only locals and passers-by like us or The Scooter knew about it (there's a framed and autographed picture of him in the shop in which he compliments them on the ice cream and the name, as you would imagine) and they were never as crowded then as they are now. My Mom, who loved to engage in banter with all types of folk, always chatted with the ladies behind the counter when we came through.

Outside of that, nothing else about it has changed, even the prices; they're really low considering how well known they are now. That's definitely worth a trip (Rt. 9 in Red Hook, NY; past the Dutchess Cty. Fairgrounds). Speaking of that, the fair is going on now through this Sunday for those who like country fairs.

5 Alex Belth   ~  Aug 21, 2014 8:43 pm

1) Brutal loss for Price, man. Wow.

2) Cowards! No, that sounds so reasonable. Plus, the place sounds like a lot of fun. Thanks for these stories, Will.

6 Ara Just Fair   ~  Aug 21, 2014 8:55 pm

Hat tip/ loud... Lol....
• Pretty funny quote from Gardner when asked what he meant when he said the team “cleared the air” during the meeting. “I just told Derek how much I didn’t like him,” Gardner said. Pretty good line.

7 Ara Just Fair   ~  Aug 21, 2014 8:56 pm

I meant lohud above. Damn autocorrect!

8 Boatzilla   ~  Aug 22, 2014 12:06 am

Man, what I really miss from American ice cream is the "dip." They don't appear to have then here unless I've missed it. I used to love the "cherry dip" on vanilla ice cream....sometimes butterscotch. Man oh man, that's heaven in the summer in Joisey.

BTW, that type of ice cream is called "soft cream" here and it's all generally made in those cartridge machines. But they do have matcha (green tea) and sakura (cherry blossom) and purple sweet potato flavors and swirls of chocolate, vanilla and the others.

TB

9 kenboyer made me cry   ~  Aug 22, 2014 10:08 pm

Martha's just south of Lake George on 9. The best "commercial" soft serve I've had in years. Over 50 flavors of the stuff.

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"This ain't football. We do this every day."
--Earl Weaver