First, Cold Stone Creamery
I’d heard of the ice cream parlor Cold Stone Creamery but didn’t get a chance to try it out until February 2007 while vacationing with the Ginger Ninja in San Francisco. It’s an ice cream shop with a twist: they create ice cream mixes by taking an ice cream flavour and toppings such as oreo pieces and graham crackers and blending them by hand on a chilled marble-like slab, as shown in the video below:
While this is fun to watch as it is, workers at some Cold Stone franchises like to add a little “flair bartending” style to the process, as the videos below show:
And Now, Marble Slab Creamery
Marble Slab Creamery is the company from whom Cold Stone took the idea — they predate Cold Stone by five years. They’ve come to the ‘burbs surrounding Accordion City.
According to their site, they’ve got locations in:
- Aurora (SmartCentres Aurora East)
- Milton (RioCan Centre Milton)
- Newmarket (SilverCity complex)
- Oakville (on Lakeshore, close to Trafalgar Road)
- Thornhill (Bathurst Centre)
- Woodbridge (RioCan Colossus Centre)
…and “Toronto” is listed as “coming soon”.
I heard about Marble Slab from my coworkers on Friday at noon, and that night after dinner, the Ginger Ninja and I hopped in the car and went to Oakville to give it a try.
Wow, is it goooood. Wendy had white chocolate ice cream with smashed-up bits of Coffee Crisp and Oreos, while I had “Birthday Cake” (sweet cream ice cream with cake flavouring, similar to a flavour called “Cake Batter” at Cold Stone) with smashed-up bits of Kit Kat and Oreos. There seem to over a dozen ice cream flavours and two dozen or so toppings to choose from, as welll as a helluva lot of types of ice cream cones.
We’ll be back.
Related Reading
Quite unsurprisingly, there are Wikipedia entries for Cold Stone and Marble Slab creameries.
2 replies on “Marble Slab Creamery”
One just opened up within walking distance from my place in Oshawa. I’ve visited it a couple of times with the kids. The ice cream is some of the yummiest stuff I’ve ever had.
I just hope they can afford to stay in business. It’s hard to see how much profit they’ll make considering the likely slow down in business during the winter, and the time and effort put into each $4 cone.
i hope a toronto one opens REAL soon.
i used to work at a marble slab before and i totally would love to work one here.