Restaurant Review

One of the businesses I deliver mail to on rural route 15 is the Cold Stone Creamery at 13600 Baltimore Avenue. Every time I've walked in there, the place has smelled of delicious diet busting treats. Because of that, it moved to the top of my list of restaurants I had to try. Today, I visited the creamery. Here are my opinions on what I thought of the place.

I walked and found out that the creamery doesn't have small, medium and large sizes for their ice cream. They have like it, love it and gotta have it sizes. According to their website, they think this is cool though I found it annoying when trying to place my order. How much do you get ice cream wise for a like it ice cream? You get 5 ounces. The love it translates to 8 ounces and the gotta have it equates to 12 ounces. In regards to shakes and smoothies, they only have like it and love it which are different from their ice cream sizes. A like it shake will be 12 ounces while a love it shake will be 20.

After seeing what they had, I decided to try their very vanilla milk shake and a creation ice cream. Their very vanilla milk shake has french vanilla ice cream, skim milk and caramel (source: http://www.coldstonecreamery.com/drinks/drinks_faq.html#shake_serve). For a milk shake that was supposed to be very vanillaish, it wasn't. I was very UNIMPRESSED with their milk shake. I was also a bit shocked by its price. A gotta have it size milk shake will set you back a still $6. In my opinion, that is some serious change for a milk shake. Frankly, I think you could make a better one at home for less money. My rating on their vanilla milk shake is they're a rip-off.

Cold Stone Creamery features 3 types of ice cream dishes. You have just ice cream, you have what they call a creation which is ice cream with 1 item of your choice and they have their signature creations. As to what you can get mixed with your ice cream, the creamery offers a large and impressive choice of items. You can get gummi bears, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, sprinkles, walnuts, pecans, Heath toffee bars, Snickers candy bars, Butterfinger candy bars, Reeses peanut butter cups, Oreo cookies, almonds, M&Ms, brownies and still many more. You decide what items you want mixed in though the more items you choose, the more you pay. Signature creations are ice cream dishes that the creamery has come up with and found so popular that they are part of their regular menu. Examples of these are Banana Caramel Crunch, Berry Berry Berry Good and Cookie Minster. If you want to see the full list of signature creations, see this webpage: http://www.coldstonecreamery.com/icecream/original_creations.html. For your information, as the signature creations have the most ingredients in them, they are the most expensive ice cream dishes the creamery has though the largest size signature creation cost $5.40 not including tax at the restaurant I visited.

I decided to try their gotta have it size butter pecan with pecans added. I found the ice cream decent. I enjoyed the pecans I had added. I found it interesting to watch the person filling my order mix the pecans in. They have a special counter where they slap the ice cream, flatten it, pour the ingredients to be added on top and then knead the ice cream like you would bread dough. Once the person is done mixing the ingredients, their scrape the concoction off the counter and put it in the appropriate size cup. If you tell the staff that it is your first visit to the creamery, the entire staff will cheer out FIRST TIMER. They will also cheer out a happy birthday if you or someone in your party is having a birthday. Cost wise, my ice cream was $4.79 plus tax. For what I received, I thought that was reasonable. Their prices are comparable to Dairy Queen with the plus that you are getting better quality ice cream.

Overall, I thought Cold Stone Creamery to be pricey and in the case of their shakes, a rip-off. Their ice cream is all right but in opinion, it isn't better than Breyer's or Hagen Daz. If you are in the mood for an ice cream treat but don't want to mess with fixing it yourself, you might want to try them. Their website has a restaurant/shop locater tool that will help you find the closest creamery to where you live. http://www.coldstonecreamery.com/. Cheers!