Company
Our story
Ice cream parlor and soda fountain. Hand-churned since the first spoon.
The kettle and the counter
The shop is named for a copper kettle. It came with the building, and it is still the pot we cook pralines in for the Pecan Praline, on a burner behind the counter where you can watch.
The counter came with the building too: a long marble top, chrome stools and a soda tap that took a summer to bring back. We kept them because a soda fountain is a place to sit for ten minutes, not a line to stand in.
How the ice cream is made
Every flavor starts from the same base: whole milk, cream and cane sugar, with no eggs. That is the Philadelphia style, and it means the flavor in the scoop is the fruit, the nut or the chocolate rather than custard. The one exception is the eggnog in the winter series, which is a true frozen custard and is labelled as one.
We churn in the morning, a few gallons at a time, and harden every batch overnight before it goes in the case or into a pint. Fruit comes from farms within a couple of hours of Charleston when it is in season, and from the freezer we filled in summer when it is not.
The fountain
Egg creams, phosphates and floats are made the way a soda jerk would recognize, with syrups we cook ourselves: chocolate, vanilla, cherry, lime, root beer and ginger. An egg cream has no egg and no cream. A phosphate is sour, dry and fizzy. Ask, and somebody at the counter will tell you why.
Who we are
A small crew of scoopers, a churning team that starts before sunrise, and two shops: one downtown, one in Mount Pleasant. If you want to join us, see careers.
