From 2013
Shaved Ice
Sweet Firefly
Almost two years after Patti Otte’s 3-year-old daughter died, Patti and friend Angie Conard opened their happy ice cream shop partially named after a poem their mutual friend wrote about the little girl. Customers love the sea salt carmel ice cream, but the SnoBall—a confection of feathery shaved ice layered with rich ice cream, more shaved ice, and condensed sweetened milk—is the perfect antidote to Texas heat.
Ice Pops
La Original Michoacana
Don’t let the inauspicious exterior fool you. Inside the shop, owner Elio Aguilar offers unconventional ice cream flavors that are worth the trip to Oak Cliff. Spicy mango has real chunks of fruit, and the queso flavor is whipped from three cheeses—Philadelphia cream cheese, salty cotija, and sweet cotija. For the less adventurous, the neveria also offers more traditional selections, such as strawberries and cream, in the form of mini paletas. They’re only 25 cents and just right for little hands.
Gourmet Ice Cream
Carnival Barker
Aaron Barker and Sarah Miller, the masterminds behind Carnival Barker’s Ice Creams, keep their recipes simple. They skip the hocus pocus (and the preservatives) for cream, milk, eggs, and sugar. The dreamy flavors—such as hatch chile chocolate; banana pudding; and Munchies, a sweet peanut butter ice cream with bits of chocolate-covered potato chips—are currently sold in shops and restaurants around town, but the creations have earned so many fans that Aaron and Sarah plan to open a storefront at The Truckyard, a food truck park opening on lower Greenville later this year.
Falooda and Kulfi
Agha Juice
If you’ve not tried Indian ice cream, do it now. And do it at the matchbox-size store where local South Asians order their fresh sugar cane juice and falooda in Urdu. The traditional bubble-gum pink confection is vanilla ice cream, rice noodles, milk, jelly pieces, strawberry and pineapple pieces, and basil seeds. It’s a party in a plastic cup. Then there’s kulfi, a ten-inch-long frozen snack of creamy milk, butter, and sugar. Khoya malai—the best of five flavors—is nutty goodness.
