Woodside Creamery

Location: Hockessin, Delaware

Date: August 20, 2013

Sometimes, Road Food can steer you towards places so unassuming and so far off the beaten path that when you get there you feel like you've stumbled across some sort of secret club meeting. And sometimes the food at these places is so fantastic that you take it upon yourself to spread the word to everyone you've ever met. The mere mention of Woodside Creamery, in Hockessin, Delaware, causes my wife to spontaneously shriek in delight at the memory of what she claims is "literally the best ice cream ever."

We live in Baltimore and my parents live in New Jersey, so we regularly drive through Northern Delaware on trips to and from their place. On the way back from one late-summer trip, we figured we would make a quick detour to Hockessin. It wasn't quick. Although on the map, it looked close enough to Route 95, it turned out to be almost a half hour detour. Although a lot of the greater Wilmington area seems like one strip mall after another, Woodside Creamery is essentially located in the middle of a field. And that's precisely the point: the cows, grazing quietly behind a picket fence, make milk that is immediately converted into ice cream. No middle-man required. Or, as Jim Mitchell, whose family has owned this land since 1796, so memorably puts it in Roadfood, "Two weeks ago, our ice cream was grass."

There are plenty of flavors on the board, and some of them are a little wacky. (I hate to spoil the party, but the whole "bacon-flavored novelty dessert" trend is entirely played out. Does anyone actually order this?) One of the weird big-ticket flavors is called "Motor Oil," and features a swirl of green caramel. The six-year-old me approves. Really though, the ice cream speaks for itself without relying on excessive toppings or fillers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with ordering something as vanilla as... mint chocolate chip. That's what my wife usually tries first at a new ice cream place - to her, it's a good barometer of the ice cream's overall quality. I had pumpkin, because I pretty much never miss an opportunity to eat something pumpkin-flavored. I'm not sure I can describe the ice cream any better than the Sterns, so here are their words: "It is wonderfully normal ice cream, by which we mean it is not sickeningly butterfatty or cloying." Couldn't agree more. I'm reminded of a trip to an ice cream parlor in Charlottesville, Virginia a few years ago. Maya and I both ordered our own cone and had taken a few licks when the punky guy behind the counter asked us if we wanted to know the secret ingredient. We said sure, but almost immediately wished we hadn't when the guy proudly revealed to us that he had used twenty percent butterfat. I think we each ended up throwing out half our cone. All of which is to say that sometimes when it comes to ice cream, there is virtue in restraint.

Maya and I ate our cones on a bench, under an overhang, in view of an old motorcycle and a story hour group for young children and their moms. (The story hour is kind of a stroke of genius, actually: who else but kids and parents show up for ice cream on week day afternoons?)

Verdict: DO IT. Woodside Creamery is only open from April to October (as you would expect from this kind of place), but I know this is a detour we'll be making again.