I feel like there are two competing approaches to this week’s review of Welcome Parlour Ice Cream.
The new craft ice cream shop recently opened in the beautiful and historic Hodson building at East Eighth Street and St. Andrews, an edifice that is also home to the charming Andrew’s on 8th café.
The first approach would consider Welcome Parlour exclusively on its own merits, pointing out that it is a family business, owned and operated by longtime North Shore residents. I would go on to point out that Welcome has a great interior design, one that is very on point with a zeitgeist that favours rustic and reclaimed materials.
Further, I would mention that the shop’s service is friendly and knowledgeable (I had the benefit of the owners manning the fort on my visit), and I would relate the coincidence of being served by the son of the owners, a personable young guy who occupied the work station right next to mine during a sushi making class at Cook Culture in March of last year.
Moreover, I would remark on the fantastic full-wall mural that enlivens the shop, an impressive transfer of an archival photo of Lower Lonsdale in the early 1900s, during which time a popular general store, the Welcome Parlour, operated in the area. From this perspective, everything about this new business is firmly North Shore.
Well, almost.
You see, the competing approach to this review would be to take a step back and consider the origins of the current thriving craft ice cream movement in the city.
Now, for the sake of full transparency, I need to tell you that while working on another project, I had the benefit of sitting down for an in-depth interview last spring with the founders and operators of Earnest Ice Cream, the East Vancouver craft purveyor whose approach to the popular frozen treat has caught on like wild fire since its modest beginnings in 2012, reinvigorating latent or staid consumer appetites and spawning a veritable revolution in their category.
With this in mind, I feel it would be remiss not to point out that Welcome has clearly been inspired by Earnest. The design esthetic is strikingly similar, from the reclaimed wooden panelling right down to how the available ice cream flavours are displayed via hand-written signs affixed to hanging clips. Small-batch is the battle cry of both operators, and I noticed a few undeniably familiar flavours of ice cream on offer at Welcome, including Apple Pie and Vegan Lime Coconut.
Ultimately, I guess the question is: so what? Does taking a page from a successful business model detract in any way from the end consumer experience?
I turn to the craft brewing industry here for guidance, recalling the mantra so often repeated by leaders in that category: all ships rise with the tide. What is good for the category as a whole is surely good for each player within it. Brewers express open and warm fondness for other businesses in their industry, sometimes even collaborating on products with groups that are ostensibly their competitors; it’s a new paradigm that holds tremendous promise for the future of local, independent businesses.
There appears to be room enough for everyone in the craft beer space and I personally relish the wide selection available to me. We’ll find out soon enough how players in the artisanal ice cream category get along as Earnest has recently announced its imminent arrival on the North Shore, with plans to open in Lower Lonsdale.
I visited Welcome Parlour with my family; there was no way I was going to sneak this review in without the kids in tow. We visited a few days after the shop’s soft opening and found the place to be busy already with enthusiastic patrons.
True to its name, Welcome is very family-friendly, with wide-open spaces and smaller serving sizes available, which I greatly appreciate as it pains me to toss away any quantity of good quality ice cream once my kids’ appetites have been defeated. Kids servings, presented in a bowl, are just $3.50; add a buck if you want that serving in a cone. Regular cones are $5.50.
Perhaps predictably, I was enticed by the Whisky Maple ice cream and found it to be the best of the flavours sampled. This was a bold ice cream, decidedly adult, with ample woodsy, toasted malt and vanilla notes with a well-integrated, aromatic maple lift. My son, The Boy, went for Birthday Cake ice cream, a faithful recreation of a store-bought white cake with sprinkles, a sweet treat flavour the ubiquity of which confounds me. It feels so incongruous with the principles of “craft” anything, but perhaps that irony is the entire point. In any event, it’s a flavour bound to resonate with kids.
My daughter, now seven years old, surprised me by not selecting the heavily touted Rocky Road flavour, opting instead for Double Chocolate, which delivered on its name’s promise of ample chocolatey richness, satisfying in its simplicity.
My wife DJ chose what would have been my second choice, Apple Pie. This flavour positively dripped of artisanal creation, with rustic, coarsely chopped bits of tangy apple and crumbly crust featuring in nearly every bite and/or lick.
We rounded out the sampling with a kids’ cup of fruity, tart, and fragrant strawberry ice cream, a close runner-up to the Whisky Maple in terms of preference.
Flavours will change seasonally and Welcome has vociferously committed in its promotional communications to using all natural ingredients.
Welcome Parlour Ice Cream is located at 277 East Eighth St. in North Vancouver. welcomeparlour.com 604-408-7481
