LSU’s ice cream is finally worth the parking risk
The Dairy Store's ice cream should be available around town, and why not a few parlors as well.
Rewind Baton Rouge to the 1980s, when K&B’s Neapolitan—vanilla, strawberry and chocolate stacked together in a carton—shared home freezer space with ice cream made at LSU.
It was hard to distinguish one from the other. Both were ice cream, technically. Neither was particularly desirable, even though ice cream should be desirable by definition.
LSU’s ice cream was considered better than most, but that needs context: it was a mediocre time for ice cream. The bright spots were the Häagen-Dazs shop near Louie’s on West State Street and Frumbrussel's in Village Square on College Drive.
So, when LSU moved its Dairy Store into the whiz-bang Our Lady of the Lake Health Interdisciplinary Science Building this year, it presented me with two opportunities: try the latest version of the ice cream and see the new building.
LSU is a pedestrian campus, which presents a small problem for people in a hurry. Parking requires getting a pass or, in my case, weighing the chance of being towed for illegally parking at the John M. Parker Agricultural Coliseum—LSU uses a lot of words to name buildings—against the chance that the ice cream is now something special.
The weather is pleasant this time of year, making the five-minute walk easy. The Dairy Store sits beside a PJ’s Coffee and a Big Chicken, the restaurant chain founded by Shaquille O’Neal.
LSU’s dairy operation has been making ice cream since 1905. The AgCenter brings milk from its dairy farm in Franklinton to the campus processing plant and turns it into ice cream within two days.
About 70 flavors rotate through the store’s 16 available spots. Last week’s selections included the standards and bestsellers, among them Tiger Stripe, a combination of vanilla and blueberry, and Mint Cookies ’n Cream.
I chose English Toffee.
This is not your father’s LSU ice cream, a thing I know because my father was a dairy science graduate from India and an LSU AgCtr Extension professor for more than four decades.
He would have been delighted by the newer version of the ice cream, which is as good as the country's best artisan brands.
The store serves it at the proper temperature, soft enough to melt in the mouth instead of requiring excavation with a plastic spoon. It is creamy without becoming cloying, a fault of some premium ice creams that mistake excessive richness for quality.
Best of all, it ennobles vanilla, a flavor so often criticized for being, well, vanilla. The English toffee pieces are folded through the ice cream in the right proportion, providing enough caramelized crunch to make themselves known without overwhelming the base.
This is exceptional ice cream. Which raises a question: Why is LSU thinking so small?
The university should expand the operation, sell LSU ice cream to local restaurants and open a couple of parlors around the parish. The name carries value, the story is genuine and the product is desirable.
Ice cream this good should not require risking a tow.
