Home >  Plan a trip >  Shopping & Eating >  Dining & grazing >  Seeking the best soft-serve

Other stories in "Dining & grazing"

• A feast of festivals
  At small-town shindigs, get your fill of strawberries and sauerkraut, kolacky and sweet corn.
• Indulging at the holidays
  At old-fashioned feasts, eat like a king or tycoon.
• Boffo B&B breakfasts
  At a Wisconsin cook-off, we find out which is best.
• Feasting in Dubuque
  Guests on a progressive dinner and mansion tour get a good look at what frontier fortunes could buy.
• Chow-down in Chicago
  In a city of neighborhoods, cooks from many countries stir the broth.
• Happy meals
  Nowadays, travelers can find great cuisine in unlikely places.
• Sweet spots
  For a taste of heaven, find your way to one of seven European-inspired chocolatiers.
• Now they're cooking
  For weekenders, rubbing elbows with a real chef is better than TV.
• Dining on the North Shore
  Finally, the cuisine matches the scenery.
• Great places for a picnic
  Here are some of the best spots in Minnesota, all with a view of water.
• Nourishing tourism
  In small towns, an interesting restaurant can make all the difference.
• The dish on Dorset
  Tiny 'Restaurant Capital of the World' is just a burp on the road.
• Grazing in Wisconsin
  Where Badger state began, Old World flavors remain.
• Cheese country
  In verdant hills around Monroe, the Swiss stay true to flavors of forebears.

Seeking the best soft-serve

Their ranks are thinning, but old-fashioned ice-cream stands still brighten road trips.

On road trips, some people look for the best pie or burger. But I look for the perfect twist cone.

Braking for soft-serve ice cream is how I stick up for the mom-and-pop drive-ins that used to be in every little town until the arrival of a certain franchise.

The ice cream almost always is better, and the atmosphere is more fun. Or maybe it's that so many of us have fond memories of our hometown Tasty Freeze or Dairy Delite, where we'd go on a warm summer night and slowly eat our cones as softball teams and old folks and families fresh from the beach filed up to the little window to get their cones, too.

These places are shockingly rare these days. But I'm still finding new ones. When I was in Stevens Point on a 69-degree day in April, Belt's Soft Serve was mobbed. A constant stream of people came to buy flurries topped with brownie-sized peanut-butter cups and giant sundaes and to get free Puppy Cups for their dogs. A collage of photos chronicled the stand's opening on March 7, when the first customers arrived at 3:30 a.m. and pitched tents so they could be first in line.

I got a twist cone, of course, a $1.25 junior cone that was the size of the Olympic torch — well, almost. It was ice-cold and firm on the tongue, and the chocolate tasted like chocolate.

I found another stand not far away, just west of Wisconsin Rapids: the Dexterville Drive-in, across from Yellow River Lake. And in Black River Falls, I spotted the Tastee Treet on Wisconsin 27, and I'm told there's a Davis Dairy Way on 27 south of town.

They're all going on my list. Here are some of the other towns that still can boast a home-grown soft-serve ice-cream stand.

One May, driving up the Mississippi from La Crosse, I found the Frosty Mug in Holmen, Wis., a drive-in where teens in tie-dyed T-shirts ferry trays to cars and picnic tables.

Along Wisconsin 29 to Door County, I’ve found two places to break up the trip — just west of Wausau, Bruce and Suzie’s in Marathon City, now Kurt N Jo's, and in Wittenberg, the Dairy King. Just past Green Bay, I watch for Deprey’s Frosty Tip in Dyckesville; and Sturgeon Bay has a charmer on Michigan Street, Sally’s Super Soft-Serve, which serves such specials as strawberry-rhubarb sundaes.

In southeast Wisconsin, I found the Frostie Freeze doing a land-office business on U.S. 12 in downtown Fort Atkinson, serving strawberry-and-vanilla twists as well as the usual zebra cone. In Walworth, just a stone's throw from high-bucks Lake Geneva, the Dari-Ripple serves a nice cone (and cheeseburgers, too).

In western Minnesota, just east of Alexandria, a cone at the Tip Top Dairy Bar in Osakis is a just dessert for bicyclists finishing the Central Lakes Trail. In Brainerd, the Triangle Drive-in has survived just off Minnesota 3, near the East Brainerd Mall, but road construction may have done it in for now.

In northeast Iowa, I always stop at the Whippy Dip in Decorah, a beloved town institution. On U.S. 12 just west of the Twin Cities, I stop at the hot-pink Peppermint Twist in Delano, taking as long as I can to eat a fresh-strawberry shake (sadly, it doesn’t serve twist cones) because it’s so much fun to sit on the shady picnic grounds, with its jukebox, ladybug chairs, inflatable monkeys and cut-out bears and candy canes.

Once, I was in a foul mood because of detours, and a cone from Treats of Lonsdale Dairy Freeze brightened my mood. It's just west of Northfield, Minn. In Winona, I found the adorable Penguin Zesto across the street from St. Stanislaus Church; just look for the bright-white spires.

Coming back from Blue Mounds State Park in southwest Minnesota, I found the Tasty Drive-In in Luverne and got a cone for the road. It's on I-75 just north of the 1-90 exit, so it couldn't be more convenient for people driving by.

In St. Paul, Conny’s Creamy Cone at Maryland and Dale is a neighborhood classic. In the suburb of White Bear Lake, the Cup and Cone is the destination of folks who've spent the day at the lake.

When I really want to treat myself, I head to south Minneapolis, where Liberty Frozen Custard occupies an old gas station at Nicollet and 54th Street, just north of Diamond Lake Road.

Oops, frozen custard doesn't count. Still, it's awfully nice to have around.

Know of any other mom-and-pop places in this region that serve great soft-serve ice cream? Let me know, and I'll add them to the list.

Last updated on November 5, 2008