On those hot summer nights when you want nothing more than some nice, cool ice cream, you’ll be in luck if it’s a Wednesday in August.
Throughout the month, Parfait Organic Artisan Ice Cream will be parking Wednesdays from 5-8 p.m. at Blue Saucer, 9127 Roosevelt Way N.E., and the Maple Leaf cafe also will stay open to accommodate customers.
Blue Saucer owner Billie Bryan has been working toward such a partnership since Parfait first started parking regularly outside the cafe earlier this summer.
“I have people coming in almost every day and asking, ‘When’s the ice cream truck coming again?’ ” Bryan said.
So just how organic and artisan is the ice cream that Parfait serves? Our partners at MyBallard explain the process that owner Adria Shimada follows to make her sweet delights:
Shimada, who lives in Ballard with her husband and 7-month old son, makes all her ice cream from scratch, something you don’t find with all ice creams. The base of her custard has four basic ingredients – milk, cream, sugar and eggs, all of which are organic. The milk, cream & eggs are from local farms and she uses fair trade, organic sugar. “My profit margins are a little lower because my ingredients are so expensive. But I feel really good about the way I make my ice cream and I feel really good about what people are eating.”
Shimada in her commercial kitchen slicing vanilla beans for vanilla ice cream.
Although Shimada, who is a trained pastry chef, started Parfait a year ago as Seattle’s only mobile organic ice cream truck, she had envisioned it for years, she told MyBallard:
“I wanted to open an ice cream shop that had the same integrity that you would find in a beautiful French patisserie,” she says. When the economy went south and opening a brick and mortar shop seemed too daunting, she had an epiphany. “I thought, everybody loves the ice cream truck!” She exclaims, “So why not make an upscale ice cream truck?” And that’s exactly what she’s done. “My cost of ingredients are high, my labor methods are costly, so it just sort of dawned on me one day that in order to stay true to the product, that if i had a mobile venue that would make more sense for an artisan product.”
Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at Shimada making vanilla bean ice cream:
Will you be among the Maple Leaf residents and others who will be waiting in line when the Parfait truck returns Aug. 4 to Blue Saucer?
