Guest Blog: Walnut Beach Creamery, a revised opinion

Guest blog by Josh Graboff, "the son," and author of the book of short stories Amalric Ogusson and the Fimbul Queen.

I went to Walnut Beach Creamery on my mother's advice. I can't believe she rated it so lowly in comparison to the other ice cream shops in the state! Jocelyn and I went together on our way back to New Jersey. The little community out there on the beach is quaint and well-maintained. The Sound actually looked attractive from the beach, and there are a number of little shops and restaurants right within walking distance.

Already, this is a step up from Wentworth's which, until we went to Walnut Beach, had been the standard by which we judged all other ice-cream. Wentworth's is on a busy highway and not really within walking distance of anything except a church, a masonic lodge, and a graveyard. There certainly aren't any little cottages on their own plots nearby.

So, when we got inside and discovered there were an amazing number of strange and delicious flavors (the lavender-fig was just the beginning of the list: I had Sandman, a peanut-butter ice-cream with chocolate covered graham crackers interspersed through it and Jocelyn had some lavender-fig and some carrot cake) that was just a bonus on top of the area.

The ice cream was creamy, there was no ice (as my mother has already made clear, ice in ice-cream is a major faux-paus. It is, essentially, the worst thing that can be done to the food), the flavors were varied, creative, and delicious. However, the real star of the show was none of those things. It wasn't even the beautiful area. It was, in fact, the pretzel cones that were hand-made and hand-shaped.

The salt on the cone elevated the ice-cream to a whole new realm. It was more delicious than I can begin to describe, and yet it remained crunchy throughout and was absolutely the best once the ice-cream above the level of the cone was gone.

I rebut my mother's review; indeed, I believe that Walnut Beach Creamery is the best ice-cream in the state and easily among the best ice-cream I've ever had anywhere. I can easily say, with no qualms and no reservations at all, that Walnut Beach Creamery is in fact, a solid and unabashed 10.