Slow-cooked steel cut oats topped with a scoop of cinnamon ice cream and housemade preserves

Buttermilk pancakes topped with banana ice cream, pecans, and maple syrup

House granola+your choice of yogurt, non-dairy milk, or a scoop of frozen yogurt

Sourdough cinnamon rolls, seasonal scones and coffee cakes

And, of course, fresh juice, espresso drinks and hand-dripped coffees.

So what do y’all think? Would you come out for ice cream brunch? Our seating will be a bit more limited than most restaurants, so we’d probably make the hours longer than most brunch places. And in the summertime there will be plenty of room out in the plaza/in front of the shop. Let us know what you think in the comments (or if you’ve got any menu suggestions), and we’ll pick a random commenter to win a jar of our granola!

Our first ice cream stop was Capogiro, which is actually a gelato shop with quite a few locations in Philly (and quite an online shop, if you want gelato shipped to your door!) We wished we’d thought ahead and emailed the owners so we could talk shop, but we were poor planners. Still, Capogiro has some of the nicest employees ever and we chatted them up about the business for a while. I got my old favorite, gelato con brioche:

We also made a trip to The Franklin Fountain (check out their website, seriously. There’s hours of fun stuff on there.) Being back there reminded me that whenever our customers ask what my favorite flavor is, I avoid telling the truth – vanilla ice cream in hot fudge sundae form is, in my opinion, ice cream perfection. So of course that’s what I got. Mr. Parlour was a wee bit more adventurous and got the Mt. Vesuvius; a sundae with coffee ice cream, hot fudge, malt powder, brownie pieces, and whipped cream.

I think that’s my “how am I gonna eat this whole thing?” face. Don’t worry, I did it.

Our last ice cream stop in Philly was at a place that’s opened since we moved away; Little Baby’s Ice Cream. We got the speculoos ice cream, which we ate too fast to take a picture of. But I did take a picture of their “pay it forward” board, because I like the idea and want to use it in our shop! Folks can come in and pre-pay for someone else’s ice cream. Check it out:

The rest of our ice cream eating was done in a tiny town in Connecticut, where we got to try ice cream made by former Manolo Blahnik executives (crazy!)

Now we’re back in town, and construction on our space has officially started. No, we still don’t have an answer to the “when are you opening” question, but at least now we can say SOON. We can’t wait to start serving up ice cream (and lots of other treats) in our shop!

Location, location, location

Okay, we’ve been talking for a while about our plans to open a brick and mortar shop. And we know people are excited about it because a whole lot of y’all pitched in for kitchen equipment. Now that we’ve signed the lease and revealed the location to our Kickstarter backers, we’re excited to announce it to the whole wide internet: The Parlour will be located at 117 Market St. in Downtown Durham!

We’re thrilled about this location, for plenty of reasons. The building is owned by Selp-Help, a credit union known for its support of local businesses. The specific space has a history of local frozen goodness, having formerly housed the production kitchen for Locopops. The new location is right across from CCB Plaza, home of the Bull Statue. So in addition to the indoor seating we’ll provide, there’ll be plenty of nearby space to enjoy your ice cream outdoors with friends! And we’ll be within walking distance of lots of other great establishments, new and old. We’ll be just a few minutes from The Pinhook, Toast, DaisyCakes, Rue Cler, Reliable Cheese, Mateo Tapas, Alley Twenty-Six, Bull City Burger and Brewery, Pizzeria Toro, Loaf, the future home of Monuts Donuts, and many many more!

Another great neighbor will be Center Studio Architecture, who are designing the space with us. They’ve done lots of work in Downtown, including Toast and DaisyCakes, and their own new home in the Five Points Project.

We’d love to provide an opening date now, but we’re really new at this and we know there are always going to be surprises. We’re pretty confident we’ll open in the winter, letting us deal with the new learning curve in the slow season. Of course, we’ll be updating folks when the schedules come more into focus.

Speaking of dates and slow seaons

Okay, here’s the slightly disappointing news: we’ll only be open for business with the bus for another few weeks. Planning and building out our shop will take a lot of work and a lot of meetings, and we need to reclaim some of our time to manage the opening quickly enough. Our last public day of bus sales this year will be October 14th. We’ll be at a lot of cool events before then, including the Pinhook’s outdoor Pride concert this Saturday, The Cookery’s Emily K Center benefit next weekend, and a food truck rodeo at Wheels Fun Park on the 14th. If you’ve got a hankering for sundaes and shakes, come find us soon!

By the way, don’t worry: the bus will be back in the spring. It’ll be at food truck rodeos and other public events, as well as being available for private catering. We’ll probably start out the bus’s next season with fewer hours than we’ve been out in the past. But depending on when we hire a trustworthy driver, you may see even more of The Parlour’s mobile scoops than ever!

“But, but… the ice cream!”

We know you’re gonna miss us. We’ll miss you too. But we want to reassure you that you’ll still be able to get our ice cream when neither bus nor shop are open. Until the shop is ready for production, we’re keeping our membership at The Cookery and will continue to make ice cream for our wholesale accounts.

You can already pick up assorted pints at Parker and Otis in Brightleaf Square or Bull Street Gourmet and Market, and ice cream sandwiches at Bean Traders’ Ninth St. location. Some of our ice cream will also be available at Market St. Coffee and Ice Cream in Carrboro. This is the new business in the former home of the Maple View Farms shop near the co-op. They’re scooping ice cream from several local producers; we’ll be providing the vegan options plus a dairy flavor or two. This weekend, our Salted Butter Caramel, Raspberry Cardamom Yogurt, and three coconut-based flavors make their Carrboro debut.

Finally, just like last year, we’ll have some opportunities for you to order some special seasonal flavors in pints and half-gallons in December and November, for pickup at The Cookery, and possibly some other locations if we can work out the details. We’ll be announcing the specifics soon.

Hey, that was a lot of words, wasn’t it? Way too many to tweet. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you soon out in Durham!

We started with a Thomas Keller recipe, and churned it in our home ice cream maker. The first batch was delicious, so we decided to tweak the recipe a bit and make a batch to sell! Our beet ice cream is mostly beet, with just a bit of orange and some vanilla bean paste. We’re not trying to hide the flavor; as Tom Robbins said, “Beets are deadly serious.”

What’s the strangest ice cream flavor you’ve tasted or made? Did you like it? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll pick a random winner to receive a pint of the beet ice cream!

This is kind of a strange week for us. We’ll be out with the bus a little less than usual, so in that respect it’ll be kind of slow. Besides our regular Rigsbee appearances Wednesday & Sunday, we’ll be at Oval Park on Thursday night and the Farmers Market Saturday morning. If you foresee intense ice cream cravings, please plan accordingly.

Aside from the light scooping schedule, there’s a lot going on this week. For one thing, the final results of this year’s Best of the Triangle survey are being published in the Indy. Notifications went out a few weeks ago, so know that we’re a finalist or winner in the Frozen Dessert category, but until we won’t know which until Wednesday. Either way, we’re thrilled to have made it into the listings, since we weren’t even in business for a year when voting ended! And we’re excited to see the rest of the results after seeing the occasional finalist announcement on the internet here and there.

“Okay,” you’re saying, “but that’s no excuse for the light scooping schedule, is it?” And you’re right, we could just read the results on our phones while selling ice cream, but there’s more. We’re putting the finishing touches on the text and video for that Kickstarter campaign we mentioned, and we’ll be launching it any day now. We’ve also got lots of meetings coming up to compare spaces and work on business planning. 

We’re also taking a little time for friends and family this week! Mr. Parlour’s mom is coming to visit for a few days, and she’s bringing her mom, whom we haven’t seen in years! We obviously have to spend at least a little time with them. And some friends of ours are getting married on Saturday, so we’re taking that evening off to help celebrate. (Of course, that we’re not appearing at the Indy’s Best Of Party that night, but you should still go and check out lots of other Best Of winners and finalists!)

So we hope you’ll let us slide a little for this week’s relative lack of ice cream service. We assure you we’ll be picking up the slack for the rest of June. It’s almost summer, our employees need the hours, and you folks need delicious ice cream! See you out there soon!

Today marks one year since our first day serving ice cream, at the Accent Hardwood parking lot, just north of the Durham Farmers Market:

We knew back then that we were making terrific ice cream, but we really had no idea if we’d sell any. Okay, we were encouraged by the fact that we had a couple hundred fans on Facebook and Twitter before we even opened, but who could say whether anyone else would find us?

Fortunately, the Triangle is full of folks who are always keeping an eye out for great food and telling their friends when they find it. Without spending a cent on advertising or press releases, we started getting requests for catering and public events and got written up in the News and Observer, Carpe Durham, Independent Weekly, and Southern Living.

Being in a bus helped, too. The food truck phenomenon that’s sweeping the country is especially big around here, and we quickly got exposure pairing up with popular trucks in popular spots.

A year later, we have a couple thousand Facebook Likes and Twitter followers. We’ve made connections with lots of awesome local business owners. And we recently found out that your support has made us a finalist in the ice cream category of the Indy’s 2012 Best of the Triangle.
So for our birthday we want to say a giant thanks to all the friends, family, customers, and other businesses that have made this possible. We won’t try to name names—there are too many awesome folks out there!

So what’s next?

Summer’s approaching, so of course, we’re going to make more awesome ice cream and bring it to you! We’ve hired an employee in the kitchen and two on the bus to help keep up with demand.

We also got a wholesale license, which lets us sell lime sorbet to Motorco for their/our Cold N’ Stormy cocktail, and ice cream sandwiches to Bean Traders on 9th. With a small staff, busy serving schedule, and shared kitchen, we’re not trying to expand our wholesale operations too fast. Still, we want to hear from other businesses who might be interested in serving our ice cream, especially folks who want to collaborate on custom flavors like Motorco’s.

Finally…

…new customers are always asking where our store is. Returning customers are always asking why we don’t have one yet. So we wanted to tell you we’re working on it.

For pretty much any space, there’s lots of equipment and renovations to pay for. We’ll to need to raise more funds than this summer’s ice cream profits, so we’re finishing up a business plan to show to lenders. And like DaisyCakes and Cocoa Cinnamon, other businesses that went from mobile to brick-and-mortar, we’ll soon be launching a Kickstarter campaign to help offset some of those loans.

As for where: we’re looking in downtown Durham (which does include that whole Rigsbee/Geer/Foster corridor that treats us so well). Yes, we have fans all over the Triangle, and maybe other parts of Durham have cheaper rent and great traffic. But the downtown scene has been so good to us, and we want to help it get better. Durham’s support this past year shows us that we can make it work. We have some options in mind, but if you have any tips on appropriate buildings, don’t hesitate to contact us. We look forward to seeing y’all soon.

Thanks again, and happy birthday!

The Parlour

It would take a lot of posts to discuss every kind of interaction with other businesses, so we’ll just talk about companies that provide a place to park. These companies support us in 2 ways: enabling us to serve to the public, or hiring us directly to cater an event.

Serving to the public

We have to begin with a hearty toast to Motorco and Fullsteam. Our regular appearances at these great Rigsbee Ave. spots have really gotten our name out there. We’ve also made occasional evening and weekend stops at Outsiders Art & Collectibles (where we’ll be this Friday!), Magpie Boutique, the Wells Fargo on Main, and Accent Hardwood.

This season: more daytime hours

In 2011 we didn’t serve much during the workweek. This season, we’ll be joining friends for lunch a few times a month, thanks to some Triangle businesses who graciously host lunch trucks. Here’s the lineup for now:

• Alternating Tuesdays (starting March 6th): We’ll be at 2510 Meridian Parkway, with Pie Pushers serving pizza and more! Thanks to Health Decisions and Insomniac Games for welcoming us to their parking lot.
• Alternating Fridays (starting March 9th): We’ll be joining Will & Pop’s every other Friday at 2701 Aerial Pkwy in Morrisville, thanks to ChannelAdvisor, where you can find a lunch truck pretty much every weekday.
• Alternating Thursdays (started March 1): We’ll be joining Pie Pushers again on alternating Thursdays at Copernicus Group IRB, One Triangle Drive in RTP.

We love bringing our handmade treats to the folks working hard in the region’s office parks, so we appreciate the companies who’ve invited us out to scoop on their property!

Catering

Triangle businesses also gave us a big boost in our first year by hiring us to come treat their employees on premises. Some of these include the aforementioned Health Decisions and Insomniac Games, as well as Epic Games, SportsMedia Technologies, Panera Bread, iContact.com, and more. Folks seemed thrilled to have us out, and we’re looking forward to making some return visits this year!

Making more connections

We plan to add some more regular daytime appearances this year, so we’d like to hear about it if your company’s a good spot to be seen. And we always welcome the opportunity to provide the treats at catered events. Could your workplace use more great handmade ice cream? Get in touch!

Upcoming Events

The first event we’re participating in is one that we’re sure lots of folks are looking forward to. Empty Bowls is a benefit for Urban Ministries of Durham’s Community Cafe, which serves three meals a day, every day of the year, to shelter residents and anyone in need of a meal. The cafe relies on volunteers and donations to keep running, and this year’s Empty Bowls event hopes to raise $30,000 to fill more empty bowls. Mrs. Parlour’s previous employer is one of the many great local restaurants contributing this year by participating in a soup competition at The Armory on March 8th. You may be wondering how we fit in, since we serve ice cream, not soup! Well, this year, Empty Bowls is having an afterparty at Fullsteam with bands and a food truck mini-rodeo. Each truck will have a special that fits in a bowl. Ours will be a sundae, naturally, and we’ll be donating 10% of our sales for the evening to Urban Ministries.

The following week is the grand opening for Liberty Arts, a non-profit metalworking studio, in its new space at the Cordoba Art Center (right by the Scrap Exchange)! This one is March 16th, a 3rd Friday, so there’ll be lots going on in the neighborhood. We’re doing a super-secret promotion that night, so keep your ears to the ground for details.

The very next day (March 17th) we’ll be at the anniversary celebration for Marry Durham. Last year, lots of folks came out for a civil union, parade, and reception pledging a commitment to keeping the Bull City great. The organizers raised $25,00 for five local charities in 2011. Vendors at this year’s event are also donating 10% for local charities (we don’t have the full list yet, but it will include at least some of last year’s recipients).

On April 21st, we head to neighboring towns for two community events in one day. First, we’ll be at the K9-3k dog walk through downtown Raleigh. This event raises money for the SPCA of Wake County. Since the Parlour family includes 3 rescued dogs and 3 rescued cats, we’re hoping lots of people register for the walk! And we’ll have free treats for your 4-legged companions. After the dog walk, we’re heading over to Briar Chapel for their Earth Day celebration, where we’ll be contributing a percentage of proceeds to the Abundance Foundation.

We’re also thrilled to be participating in this year’s Beaver Queen Pageant on June 2nd. The Pageant is a family-friendly outdoor event with music and food. It’s also a fundraiser for the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association, which is dedicated to restoring and preserving Ellerbe Creek, which runs right through Durham (including the park where we walk our dogs). Keep an eye on the Beaver Lodge website to find out about donating or participating in the pageant!

There are still more events we’re confirmed for and probably others to come, but this post is fairly long already. And we wanted to get to this last bit:

On a personal note…

Even before all these events, we’re participating in one more thing related to our little corner of the community. Our fellow food trucker Kenny Pettis, the Pop in Will and Pop’s was badly injured in a motorcycle accident earlier in February. During the week of the February 26th, we’re joining several other food trucks to collect donations to help out with Pop’s mounting medical expenses. If you’re a fan of Will & Pop’s locally-sourced street eats, or just want to show your support for the Triangle’s food trucks, please consider making a donation. Each truck will be pitching in with a contribution of our own, too, picking one day that week to donate a percentage of sales. We’ll post a list of participating trucks in the next few days.

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see y’all out and around soon!

Now, since we’re making this ice cream in January while we’re closed, we used your average grocery store (organic) blueberries. During blueberry season we get ours from either Lyon Farms or Snikroc; both farms have pick-your-own, which is a fun thing to do before it gets too unbearably hot. And I know maybe right now you’re thinking “man, those limes are kinda gross looking”, but Mrs. Parlour likes limes best when they’ve ripened a bit, until they’re more yellow than green. Buttermilk and fresh vanilla bean (not pictured) are also part of the equation.

First, we cooked down fresh blueberries with sugar and pressed them through a sieve to make a thick blueberry sauce.

While the sauce thickened up in the fridge, the ice cream base came together: first, cream, sugar, and vanilla bean:

Then lime zest, and a bit of cornstarch to thicken the custard.

After adding the buttermilk and some lime juice, we let the custard get nice and cold before churning.

Then came the slightly more challenging part; layering the just-churned ice cream with the blueberry sauce. See that blur in the top left corner of the photo? That’s my hand moving as quickly as I can make it.

We’re pretty happy with the end result, so we’re giving a pint away! Just leave us a comment letting us know what new flavors you’d like to see on the bus this year. We’ll choose a winner randomly by Monday at noon.

1. Starting now-ish, our menu will condense a bit. We’ll have 6 regular flavors, 1 vegan flavor, and 1 sorbet, and not quite as many toppings.

2. We’ve added French-style hot chocolate, old fashioned hot cocoa, and spiced cider to the menu, and we plan on adding chai and some sort of coffee drink as well. Right now the availability of hot drinks is contingent on weather, but they’ll be regular items once the weather’s regularly cool.

3. Once it’s for-real cold, we’ll be pre-packing our items to go. Instead of waiting in line and then ordering and waiting some more, you’ll be able to grab something to go and take it right away. This means selections will be more limited, but it also means we will have ice cream sandwiches regularly and we will make an extra effort to vary the menu and keep things interesting.