By Lee Cole
Will Rogers, the American cowboy and humorist, once said that he never met a man he didn’t like. Similarly, I’ve never met a dessert I didn’t like. Anything across the dessert spectrum I’ve likely tried and enjoyed. So you can imagine how elated I was just thinking of Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen. Any attempt at retaining journalistic distance quickly faded within the first few bites, when adjectives like “glorious” and “awe-inspiring” started coming to mind.
The first thing you notice upon entering the restaurant is the aroma, a scent that would be immediately recognizable to anyone, like me, who has spent some time around baking pies. Because they bake a multitude of pies with various fillings and crusts, the individual scents mingle together to form one unified, mouthwatering aroma. I quickly obliged my taste buds and ordered a slice of chocolate chess pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen has an expanse of pies, ice cream and cakes to choose from. It has all the traditional favorites in the pie category, like pecan, chocolate, butterscotch and chess, plus a wide variety of fruit pies, including apple and cherry. The ice cream selection includes all of the standard flavors, plus a few interesting ones like Birthday Party, Smurf and Strawberry Shortcake. Additionally, the restaurant serves an assortment of cakes, cookies and cupcakes, as well as an array of deli sandwiches and soups.
My food was only a small sampling compared to the epic menu. But when I first tasted the chocolate chess pie, I was instantly happy with my purchase. Unlike the pie you would find at a chain restaurant or an average diner, this one tasted fresh and not at all like it had been sitting out all day. The crust fused perfectly with the filling, but retained the pie’s structure, allowing for perfect slices. The vanilla ice cream was a perfect complement to the rich chocolate pie. And I was given a generous helping of both.
The food itself wasn’t the only terrific thing about my visit. The employees were helpful and polite. They didn’t rush me as I stared dumbfounded at the giant menu and the vast assortment of desserts in the brightly-lit glass cases. The atmosphere was welcoming as well. Everything – from the table tops to the furniture and the floor – looked as though it was cleaned meticulously on a regular basis.
For the quality, you’d think that the pies required a diverse assortment of rare ingredients and skilled chefs. I imagined the owners sending out ambassadors to the four corners of the globe. Cinnamon from Java, cacao beans from West Africa, vanilla beans from Indonesia – and then bringing it all to some 120-year-old shaman in a secret village in the Andes Mountains who would teach the chefs how to combine the ingredients and bless the finished product with a strange spell to make it irresistible.
Somehow, I don’t think this is the case. But each dessert tastes like it was prepared with as much attention and care. The folks at Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen know what they’re doing, and they’ve been doing it for a long time.
The restaurant is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. until 9:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday 12 to 9 p.m.
