What to Eat in Pittsburgh

First, I must admit that I began to write this post back in October. Ordinarily I would say that now we are just beginning to emerge from the dead of winter, I’m pretty sure you aren’t looking to find a new ice cream place. But with global warming, the weather in Pittsburgh has been pretty temperate. I nearly took off my fleece yesterday. So with that in mind, here’s a post about a new ice cream place that not only serves great ice cream, but comes with an interesting story. And that story is part of why it took me so long to write the post – I’ve done a lot of thinking and consulting with journalist friends (ahem Ashley Cleek), and now I’m ready to put this out there. So here goes.

I had heard about a new ice cream place that opened in Lawrenceville. But not just any ice cream place – one that served Penn State Creamery ice cream.

From my few experiences passing through State College, I recall cows being kind of a big thing. I once ate at the Penn State cafeteria and recall a milk machine with seemingly endless dispensing options, kind of like a cow with a dozen flavored udders.  It left an impression. And we’d also heard that Penn State had a creamery with amazing ice cream. But we never contemplated making a pilgrimage to State College just to try it.

One night in October, friend of the blog Harry, of Tana (and many other) post fame, Mr. Foodie, the kiddos, and I headed out to Walter’s Southern Kitchen in Lawrenceville.  We’ve been there, it’s amazing, and we are going to write about it. The wait was too long, so we went to Franktuary. After hot dogs with unlimited toppings, we knew we needed something creamy and sweet. Harry loves ice cream, so we knew he’d be up for a field trip. Taking turns carrying the kiddos in their carseats, we walked the few blocks to Frio.

First, the place is gorgeous. Simple, white, clean, and, true to the name, kind of feels like you’re in a gleaming freezer. Not one that’s physically cold, just shiny and twinkly.

And yes, as we had heard, they sell Penn State ice cream. In fact, other than a few vegan flavors, all of their ice cream comes from Penn State.

We were there on the first truly cold evening of the season, and even then, there was a short line. Clearly the word had gotten out about the place. And also, keep in mind that other than Naturoll (yummy but pricey niche rolled ice cream, which always has a line out the door), it’s the only ice cream place in hip Lawrenceville. Let that sink in. Purely from a business standpoint, this place has all of the makings of a success.

Then the ice cream. We probably tasted 10 flavors – we were those people. Everything was fantastic. We asked for advice on which flavors were the most popular, and that Penn State alums came by asking for. Death by chocolate and cinnamon stickies were mentioned. We tried them, and many more. Finally, we settled on a size medium, which comes with 4 small scoops, up to 3 flavors. We selected death by chocolate, happy happy joy joy (kind of like an almond joy), and a third flavor that I honestly can’t remember what it was.

This was the size medium – it was definitely not medium. More like huge. Mr. Foodie and I split it, while Harry ate this delicious homemade waffle cone:

We stood in the corner, with the kiddos, enjoying our treats. The ice cream is smooth, creamy, sweet, and just downright good. Of course, we struck up a conversation with the co-owner, Dinch. We had to ask for the story behind this place. Apparently, Dinch’s friend tried the ice cream and told Dinch how great it was. Then Dinch did some research and found out that wow, not only is this ice cream great but it is actually well-known and has a following. Penn State Creamery apparently doesn’t franchise and doesn’t make it easy to serve its ice cream – they don’t deliver. Once a week, Dinch’s team makes the 5 hour round trip drive to State College with a freezer truck. He tells me that the next closest places that serves Penn State Creamery ice cream is in Elizabeth, 45 minutes from Pittsburgh.

We rarely (if ever?) write about places that serve something that isn’t homemade. But here, we made an important exception for several reasons. First, Dinch. Dinch cares a lot about the quality of the product. As he pointed out, he could have served Hershey’s ice cream and gotten business, for all the reasons we cited that an ice cream shop in Larryville is a great business opportunity. But Dinch is committed to quality. That shows in his dedication to getting great ice cream, and making homemade waffle cones, hot fudge, and whipped cream (we got to try the hot fudge and whipped cream – it’s outstanding).

Several days later, we found ourselves driving to Reading, PA. That made us think: how far out of the way is State College from the usual Pittsburgh to Reading route? Turns out, just 90 minutes. It could have been 3 hours. We were so inspired by Dinch and what he was doing, we wanted to know more. So even with two babies in the backseat, we didn’t hesitate. We routed our GPS to the Penn State Creamery.

First, we were working against the clock to arrive before 4:30pm for the creamery’s “video tour.” We parked illegally in a faculty parking lot and raced into the observation room, kiddos in arms, with 5 minutes to spare.

 

 

There was a small TV that showed a pretty cool educational video, as educational videos go. Plus, we got to see the machines behind the creamery’s operation. And all of this is essentially right in the middle of campus.

After 5 minutes (which is all you really need to watch the video and look at the machines), we hopped over to the creamery. I marched up to the counter and announced that this was going to be dinner, so we needed help selecting all of the best ice creams to try. One scoop of each, please. No need to look at the menu. We carried all of our ice cream over to the table, which was quite a sight.

But then, yeah, we needed to photograph the menu:

Bittersweet Mint, a hundred variations on chocolate, Peachy Paterno…..wait, what? Peachy Paterno?

Visual confirmation:

Up until that point I was basking in the continuous glow of warm fuzziness that typically surrounds my blogging, blog-related eating, and food scouting. Just seeing the name was enough knock the wind out of my sails. If you live in Pittsburgh, I probably don’t have to tell you who Joe Paterno was. In case you need to read up, here’s a pretty good description of the evidence that suggests Paterno knew about sexual abuse claims against Jerry Sandusky. Paterno died of lung cancer before he could be brought to justice, but Sandusky was convicted. While both denied all of this, and many people (especially die-hard Penn State fans) have rallied behind them, this is not a chapter of Penn State’s history to be celebrated, to say the very least. Keeping a flavor that celebrates Paterno as a “peachy” guy is definitely something we had to explore.

We set about doing so in two ways. First, I contacted Dinch. He agreed to a brief interview on the topic. He confirmed that his store does sell the flavor, but under a different name: “Just Peachy.” He confirmed that they changed the flavor’s name intentionally to remove “Paterno.” “We were surprised that they still kept the name, to be honest,” Dinch said. “We have a very simple store. ‘Just Peachy’ was a simple enough name for us. Our goal is just to serve ice cream. That’s all.”

At the same time, I had set out to contact anyone at the Penn State Creamery who could comment. I called the number listed on their website and was greeted cheerfully by someone at the ice cream shop. I told him briefly that I was interested in the decision to keep the name Peachy Paterno. He immediately suggested I talk to someone more senior than him. He transferred me to a woman who said, about them keeping the name, “Some people didn’t like it, most people don’t care, especially when it first happened.” She added, “We had another one named after Sandusky, it got pulled the day after all that came out.” Then she quickly said I should talk to someone more senior, and said she would send my inquiry to a man named James Brown.

This prompted me to do two things. First, I had to look up the whole Sandusky flavor thing. This was intriguing. Turns out that right when all of this was happening, in 2011, several local news outlets mentioned with ire that Peachy Paterno was continuing to be sold under that name. One also explained  that Sandusky Blitz, as it was called, a banana-flavored ice cream with chocolate covered peanuts and caramel, was discontinued. Several years later, a suspiciously similar flavor with a banana base, peanut butter, and chocolate chips was released called “Monkey Business.” I also found this 2016 New York Times piece that mentions the Peachy Paterno flavor in passing, amid a discussion on whether the University should be publicly celebrating Paterno at all (their conclusion: it shouldn’t).

Second, I needed to contact James Brown. When I didn’t hear back from him by phone, I turned to the Google. I found him on the creamery’s website, listed as the creamery’s Assistant Manager, along with his email address. He responded to my email within days, and the conversation went like this:

“Peachy Paterno is peach flavored ice cream, named for Joe Paterno’s Academic contributions/support to the University.  Monkey Business is not the Sandusky Flavor, as the only similarity is that they are both Banana flavored.   That would be like saying that Death by Chocolate is the same as Peanut Butter Cup because they are both chocolate flavored.”

I found the first part of his response to be distressing, second part to be hilarious (I was being cited on an ice cream technicality, pardon me).

I immediately wrote back with the following:

“Just to clarify then, the Sandusky Blitz flavor was discontinued altogether?

Did you contemplate discontinuing Peachy Paterno? Why or why not?”

To which Brown responded,

“Yes, the Sandusky Blitz flavor was discontinued altogether.  However, since the peach flavor was named for academic contributions and nothing affiliated with football or athletics programs, there were no grounds to discontinue the name or the flavor.”

Interesting. He’s acknowledging that there would be a reason to distance themselves from his football accomplishments, but not his academic ones. It is as if he was leading two lives – one acceptable, one not. The acceptable one can still be celebrate, while the other can be ignored.

And as one Penn State student pointed out in an editorial when discussing whether or not to celebrate Paterno through a “Paterno Day,” current students are understandably ready to move far, far away from this history. She said, “This is our Penn State. It is a Penn State without Joe Paterno. It is a Penn State that is still trying to rebuild, make amends and propel forward. Those of us here now are beyond ready to move on.”

I had to ask Dinch what he thought about all of this. His response: “Maybe they should call it ‘Just Peachy.’” I think I have to agree.

And that seemed to be the end of it. Luckily, having a busy work schedule and two little babies made me procrastinate publishing this post. Earlier this week, when I decided to get back to it, I re-connected with Dinch to see if the story had any updates. It sure did. Dinch wrote this to me:

“Interestingly enough I had a call from the Creamery couple weeks ago and [was] told that we have to use their product names. So we recently started calling [the flavor] Peachy Paterno as well. They suggested if we don’t want to call it they understand and we have option of not buying peach flavor, but we didn’t want to discontinue a good flavor just because of a name discrepancy.”

I asked if anyone had commented on the name, either before or after the change. He replied that while some really liked the name change to “Just Peachy,” older Penn State Alums didn’t. “[Regardless of] what’s it is called, it tastes the same,” he added.

What’s in a name? Is this really just about ice cream? I’m pretty sure that a flavor called Peachy Paterno wouldn’t leave a great taste in my mouth.