Dipped soft serve cones saved my marriage. When, at the age of 28, having been a licensed driver for more than a decade, I needed to learn stick shift, it was my husband who put his head in the lion’s mouth. We practiced every day on backroads and in empty parking lots in upstate New York, testing the limits of his patience and my frustrated rage, both of which proved more or less boundless. It was the first true test of our fledgling marital bond. Wisely, he ended each day’s lesson by pulling into the Red Rooster Drive-in and ordering us a pair of dipped cones. Would we still be together if they only had sprinkles? I can’t say.
In Eureka, Fresh Freeze (3023 F St.) has the market cornered on dipped cones ($4.15). Order inside and wait for your ice cream at the side window out front, listening to doo-wop piped into the picnic table area and perusing the vintage model cars in the windows (surely all of them with manual transmissions).
Behind the glass, foamy, flat-bottomed cake cones with structurally concerning spirals of vanilla, chocolate or twist soft serve are inverted with speed and confidence into liquid chocolate sauce that hardens to a solid shell as it’s handed through the window. Before your tongue is chilled, the coating melts against it with a flavor closer to frosting than a chocolate bar. There are few more soothing sounds than the cream-muted crackle of breaking through to the ice cream beneath. And managing the drips undammed by biting through the wall of chocolate requires your complete attention. It is the most necessarily mindful of ice cream experiences.
Listen, not all chocolate has to be 87 percent cacao and not all vanilla needs to be flecked with bean. There are times — especially contentious times when you may have angrily jammed the brakes and left twin black streaks curving on the asphalt behind you — when mild, milky flavors are required. Wait for the full glare of summer if you like, but this seemingly unremarkable pleasure is here now to enjoy in a patch of sun. It is the best kind of nostalgia, simple and sweet, as you forget all else to fuss with your failing napkin to get at the wafery cone. That it is cold against the hand you will never admit you injured slamming on the steering wheel is a bonus.
Share your tips about What’s Good with Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her), arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
This article appears in Glory Over Land and Sea.