We love seeking out new restaurants and new and unique places to eat. Things that you just can't find at other places. Places that help to define some of the places that we go to, but yet won't empty out the pocket book at the same time. And we sometimes chase down restaurants that are featured on the Food Network or Travel Channel.
But that doesn't include just the typical sit-down restaurants. We love ice cream as well, and there are still some places out there where you can walk up and get some great unique ice cream.
There's Ted Drewes Frozen Custard in St. Louis which has been featured on TV, and is supposedly a place that Elvis Presley himself frequented. And there's the Peppermint Twist Drive-In in Delano, Minnesota, which we visited after it's appearance on the Food Network. More recently (as in last summer), we discovered an ice cream shoppe in a gas station as we drove across Wisconsin that used the http://www.icecreamflavors.com/ system and had (more than) 24 flavors of soft serve ice cream. Coming back home from Louisville, we found another restaurant in Illinois that also used that system, so instead of stopping at a Steak and Shake restaurant, we decided instead for soft serve ice cream. I personally wish that the ice cream flavors website would offer a listing of its clients so as to make them easier to find. I can no longer remember the name of the city or what gas station in Wisconsin serves the 24 flavors, but in Rapids City, IL, it is Brother's Family Restaurant (1718 2nd Avenue).
UPDATE June 15, 2010: The name of the place in Wisconsin that serves the 24 flavors of soft serve ice cream is at the Fox River Travel Plaza (811 Green Lake Road, Princeton, WI).
While we were in Louisville, Kentucky, and Clarksville, Indiana, we found a Zesto Ice Cream shoppe (http://www.ilovezesto.com/), which we went to twice, which had 17 flavors of soft-serve frozen yogurt, not to mention sundaes and specialty sundaes and other delicious frozen treats.
Upon getting back, we looked to see if there was a Zesto near us. We learned that apparently there was a national Zesto chain, but it looks like this is no more. The Zesto that we went to has three restaurants in southern Indiana, but they are not affiliated with any other Zesto.
There are two restaurants in Winona that are called Penguin Zesto, and according to information that we found online, these were once a part of the Zesto chain. With Winona only an hour away, and even though the temperature was only in the low 70s at the time and threatening rain, we set out to check out this ice cream shoppe to see if it was at all similar to the Zesto in Clarksville. It wasn't. We ordered basic burgers, which were fairly reasonably priced, and good, but nothing special about them. And then we got our sundaes. I got a banana sundae, which I thought would be made with sliced banana, but it was actually made with a banana syrup instead. This helped to make the whole ice cream taste like banana, similar to flavor swirls you can find at Burger King or other sellers of soft-serve ice cream. The only place to eat at this place were three picnic tables outside, and fortunately, the rain held off long enough so that we didn't get wet as we ate. Would I drive an hour just for this restaurant again? Probably not, but if we are driving through Winona and decide that we want ice cream, it's definitely worth a stop.
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