Yes, just a few steps up and aross the street was a new ice cream shop...
We noticed the signage a few months ago during the Lemon Festival but the store wasn't open just yet.
As we approached the door, bubbles from a bubble machine were floating in the air...
The shop, which is on at the northeast end of Third, is kind of easy to overlook, if it weren't for the big sign on the awning and the pink and brown paintjob (reminding me of strawberry and chocolate ice cream).
It's pretty small inside with only a few tables for limited seating, along with tables and chairs out front.
According to the man (and his niece) working there, the shop is owned by a relative.I want to say cousin or uncle, but I forgot the relation. The shop is named after the owners, husband and wife, Arturo and Diana.
Anyhow, they offer ice cream as well as various Mexican treats like mangonadas, diablitos, and tostilocos!
They had a decent selection of ice cream in the normal flavors (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, butter pecan, various sherbets, etc).
The ice cream containers had "Bon Suisse" as the brand. When I tried looking up the company online, I found a few references to it being a San Diego owned business but couldn't find an actual website for the company. Ardi's website also lists Dreyers as one of the ice cream brands they offer, but the day we visited, it was all Bon Suisse.
I ended up getting a scoop of the "Maui Wowie" (passionfruit and guava sherbet NOT Marijuana flavor!) and a mangonada for TC (frozen mango chunks with chamoy and a straw coated with tamarind candy and chili powder), while Cathy got a diablito (lemon sherbet with chamoy and chaca chaca; kind of like a chamango without the mangos). About my ice cream flavor's name, I immediately thought of the drug reference (twisted me). I'm not sure if the owners know about "Maui Wowie"! This flavor might disappoint some stoners, ha ha. "Awww man!"!
I think TC would have liked this more than I did. It was a sherbet and I'm not too fond of overly fruity flavors. This tasted very artificial to me.
For a younger person's taste, it would be okay, but I could tell this ice cream wasn't the best quality. The fruity flavors looked so artificial, but I can see how they would seem "attractive" to some. Not to me. I ended up not finishing it...since I didn't like it so much and also because it was melting and becoming a gooey mess as we were walking back to the car. TC saw the photos of the ice cream flavors and totally wants to try the purple and blue one (cotton candy). Despite not liking this particular flavor of ice cream, I would still give this place another shot. The mangonada was actually pretty good but I like the Chamangos from Teresita's much better.
Ardi's Ice Cream Cakes & More
225 Third Ave
Chula Vista, CA 91910
(619) 520-4733
ardisicecream.com
Plus a few reviews from yelp
And thus concludes our day which can be read in this order:
Asi es el South Bay Food Crawl - First stop: Texcoco
Return to Asi es Jalisco
Mercado International 2000
Pulutan Time at the Kababayan Market
Save a Lot Market
Mariscos Isaac
Moreliana Panaderia revisit
New Mac flavor at Sweet Sisters Bakery
Chico's Bakery
and of course, this post!
2 comments:
The Mister really liked the Diablito; the lemon was really nice and tart, so it was a sort of 'lemonada' and pleasant. This was another good find. I like supporting locally owned places and everything we did on this 'crawl' was unique, thank you for organizing all of this.
hi cathy, i will have to try a diablito next time, but perhaps at teresita's. my daughter might like it more since she likes sour thing. glad you liked the places we went to.
there are so many other great places down here and it's so hard to get to them all in such a short time.
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