Bruster's Real Ice Cream

Shop Name: Bruster's Real Ice Cream

Location: Columbia Ave.

Boo's Rating: 4 Screams

Happy Father's Day, folks! My father lives 400 miles away, so I spent my day deliberating where to go for my next ice cream cone. The choices in Lancaster are getting rather limited. http://www.bigyellow.com/ told me there was an Edy's on Hempstead Rd. The interwebs lied. Either that, or I drove past it without seeing it. Instead, I ended up at Bruster's Real Ice Cream on Columbia Ave. It was such a perfect summer day- not too hot, but hot enough where an ice cream cone is the perfect refreshment.

I was really excited to see that they have a flavor called "Purple Dinosaur" listed. Where I'm from, we've got a flavor called "Purple Cow" that I haven't seen around here. It's basically black-raspberry ice cream with white chocolate chunks. Get it? Purple cow? So I thought Bruster's "Purple Dinosaur" was going to be something similar. I asked about the flavor at the window, and was sadly informed that "Purple Dinosaur" is nothing more than vanilla ice cream with a whole lot of purple food coloring. Gross. Not to mention really disappointing. There were a lot of other interesting flavors listed on the board including one I'd never seen- Chocolate Oreo. I had to have it. Who doesn't love Oreo ice cream, right? And CHOCOLATE Oreo? Delicious, right? Holla. I asked if they had plain cones and the girl at the window said they had sugar cones and "cake" cones. "What's a cake cone?" I asked. She brought one over the show me and lo and behold, a "cake" cone" is a flat-bottom plain cone! HALLELUJAH!!! Bruster's is the FIRST place on my ice cream quest to serve them! Whoo-hoo!!! I could barely contain my excitement. I ordered a single scoop of the chocolate oreo on a "cake" cone. The flavor was fabulous- nice and chocolate-y. And the texture was totally different from any other ice cream I've ever had. It was light and fluffy, almost like the texture of mousse. I usually like my ice cream really thick, but the light airiness of this was actually really nice. And it was CHOCK FULL of oreo cookie bits. The only complaint I have is that the "cake" cone was actually really stale. Maybe because they call it a "cake" cone, people don't know what that means and instead order a sugar cone, so the "cake" cones end up sitting around getting stale. I dunno. Either way, the stale cone and the food-coloring filled ice cream knocked Bruster's down a bit to a total of 4 screams, which is still a stellar rating.