The Fort Worth ice cream shop Melt—with its happy, chick-yellow vibe and allegiances that show up in flavors that incorporate Dude, Sweet chocolate and Avoca coffee—opened an outpost last Saturday in the Bishop Arts district, at 405 N Bishop Ave., next to Eno’s Pizza Tavern, in a neighborhood now brimming with ice cream openings.
Landing in the neighborhood has fulfilled a dream, says co-founder Kari Crowe-Seher, who opened the first Melt with her husband in 2014.
Some of you may remember the Dallas pop-ups several years ago in the farm stand Urban Acres on Beckley (now defunct and replaced by Local Press + Brew). Already, Melt was making vegan flavors that caught my attention. (Their line-up always includes two.) It’s around that time that Crowe-Seher began to fantasize about touching down.
“We’ve been dear friends with the owners of Eno’s for years,” Crowe-Seher says. “We have a suite inside of the building. They have their Side Dough operating out of that space. And you’ll be able to get pizza to-go and beer to-go out of that back window.”
Regarding Bishop Avenue, Crowe-Seher says, “[It’s] so reminiscent of the street we’re on in Fort Worth[‘s Magnolia district]. We don’t want to just open ice cream shops. We want to be part of a neat neighborhood. I knew that Bishop Arts had that sense of a really vibrant neighborhood.”
“About a year ago, we built out a production facility in an old facility in Fort Worth, O.B. Macaroni,” Crowe-Seher says. There, they’re neighbors to a coffee roastery and other small businesses. “We’ve been delivering to the Magnolia location since then. So, we’re making everything in same location for consistency’s sake.”
Six standard flavors include nostalgic vanilla, salted caramel, and a vegan chocolate with a light coconut-milk base. Four rotating flavors allow room for creativity, as in the current highlights: crème brulee with shards of sugar glass, a deeply purple wild blueberry pie with cornmeal pie-crust crumbles, and a vegan peanut butter flavor layered with fine shavings of chocolate, like a stracciatella.
Toppings for the season include Meyer lemon marmalade, thyme butterscotch, and blueberry buttermilk crumbles, which can be piled into a seasonal sundae. And the house waffle cone, made with real cream and butter, which sends tendrils of baking aromas into the street, has a seasonal flavor as well—currently almond.
They’re unabashed in their mission to peddle joy. “Our goal is to be the best five minutes of everybody’s day. And we believe that can have a ripple effect,” Crowe-Seher says.
Meanwhile, a Fort Worth artist is completing the mural that will add dashes of color to the counter-front. They didn’t worry about debuting without the final touches, Crowe-Seher says. “We just wanted to get our doors open.”
You’ll find nothing different from the Fort Worth location in Bishop Arts yet. But Crowe-Seher says she’s excited about Dallas-specific partnerships soon.
