Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Quick Bites: We Scream for The Screamery—Now Downtown

Posted By on Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 11:00 AM

The Screamery Handcrafted Ice Cream has a couple other locations in Tucson, but its latest one—in the heart of downtown, which opened this summer—has been getting the most attention. It’s pretty daring to open a location of your gourmet ice-cream shop smack in the middle of HUB territory (the HUB is basically across the street), and The Screamery has a lot in common with its already well-established competitor (widely-praised-as-tasty products; eclectic flavors; homemade and locally sourced fare; friendly staff; awesome interior design … and the prices are comparable, too).

But there are a few things that make The Screamery stand out:

1. “The Flight”: a menu option letting the customer choose six (count ’em, six) different flavors (served as small scoops) as one order.

2. A punch card! The Screamery isn’t above a little customer-incentive hack like giving you every 15th scoop free.

3. Ice cream that’s pasteurized by the shop. Screamery co-owner Kenny Sarnoski II is the only certified pasteurizer the state, and his stores make their own cream base out of milk from grass-fed cows, instead of ordering it from Shamrock Foods. This lets the Screamery mix in their (chemical-free) flavors and ingredients early on in their signature five-step process.
What about taste? We have no doubt that a bajillion HUB devotees would declare it impossible for any other store to top the deliciousness of a particular favorite HUB flavor (“bacon bourbon” comes to mind). But we’ve also heard and read plenty of amazing reviews of The Screamery’s ice cream, such as that it’s “lighter” and/or less sweet than the HUB’s—and this place, too, has some rave-worthy flavors (like “sweet cream honeycomb”).

Anyway, we’re not gonna argue that either place is better than the other. We’re really just thinking, “Now we have two super-delicious and trendy hand-churned ice-cream shops downtown?! YAY!”

So go do some sampling for yourself—before the high temps drop to, say, below 80 degrees.
The Screamery, 250 E. Congress St., 207-7486,