This is a really great thread. Love the title, the premise and most, the insight.
I too love chocolate ice cream, unfortunately, I can't have it anymore--just for today. (actually, I'm more of a purist, with vanilla being my favorite of flavors, maybe even with a touch of banana, but I still love chocolate, and go bonkers over rocky road)
To get that kind of ice cream, well you really have to spend some time working out a balance to perfection or, you can just manufacturer the ice cream, put it in a swanky-looking carton, and advertise the sugar out of it, thus making people think it's best chocolate ice cream there is when in fact it's just really not all that memorable.
Point in example:
Out here in California we had a chain of drug stores called Thrifty Drug, who for years manufactured there own brand of ice cream at a plant in El Monte. They had this one flavor called, Chocolate Malted Crunch where they take actual malted milk balls, break them up into chunks and mix it into their world class ice cream. One bite, and your mouth is like filled with this rich, and I mean RICH chunky, yet creamy flavor that has you not wishing it to ever melt in your mouth. The flavor is, well quite memorable. It was like delievering manna from heaven in each bite.
They also had a Pistachio ice cream where they mixed very large pieces of cashew in with the completely different tasting type of pistachio ice cream. There isn't even close to most pistachio's, that are nothing more then vanilla, diluted with a green food coloring and added artifical pistachio flavor.
Do I even have to describe Thrifty's Chocolate Fudge Brownie?
But the thing about Thrifty's ice cream was it was this world class ice cream which was for years, at an unbelievable price. It wasn't until the late 80's, that they raised the price from $.15 a scoop to it's price now, which is like $.85 a scoop. It still good, too, although since the Rite Aid takeover, the quality has diminished somewhat.
You see, Thrifty did a great job because they knew how to manufacturer ice cream the old fashion, way with no preservatives and other checmicals and manufactured and artificial flavors, opposite of the way Fazio manufactuers his brand of ice cream, with it's really eye-pleasing carton and 31 different flavors of vanilla.
But what's worse is when he takes a great old staple of Rocky Road, (Augusta) which is like the best, most legendary rock road you can get and then gives it his own twist--making it better--or so he thinks. Well, is it as good as the original? I mean it has all of these artifical flavors and added bonuses, and really beautiful packaging, but ultimately, it isn't even close to the Thrifty Drug Store brand, which frankly was just so perfect that the only thing needed was to keep the formula the same without altering it for years to come.
What a great, informative thread.