Thursday, May 31, 2007

Maggie Moo's

With a bevy of new restaurants and other businesses popping up in the new Crossroads Entertainment Complex, Maggie Moo's has joined other businesses such as Harkins Theaters, Juice It Up!, Que Paso, a new medical building complex and a Hampton Inn.


Another contender in the marble slab/mix in ice creamery, Maggie Moo’s is slowly making its way into California. While most locations are in San Diego and Orange Counties, a few are popping up in other places.

Although the mix ins are a good idea in theory because you can customize your ice cream, I now think of it as more of a marketing ploy. I think the mix ins detracts from the ice cream, and I wonder if these types of places are trying to hide the fact that their ice cream may be less than premium. You know, the fact that the flavor and richness of their ice cream can’t stand on their own. High end super premium ice creams will be made with very few ingredients allowing the quality of each ingredient to shine on its own.

Some of the ice cream at Maggie Moo’s looks like it’s been made in a nuclear reactor because of their bright and fluorescent colors. The Twizzlers is a shocking bright red, like a pool of fake arterial blood; and the Very Yellow Marshmallow is a disturbing shade of yellow, like somebody blew up Tweety Bird and turned him into ice cream.

The peanut butter is a rarity to find. Many places have a variation of peanut butter, such as peanut butter and chocolate, but not straight peanut butter. Maggie Moo’s makes their peanut butter ice cream with the addition of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. It has a strong peanut butter taste, but it doesn’t taste like fresh ground peanuts. I could not discern any chocolate taste from the Reese’s, so in my estimation it’s still a pure peanut butter ice cream. The ice cream leaves a greasy mouth feel, which I believe is from the peanut butter and not how the ice cream is made.

The Espresso Bean ice cream has a strong coffee flavor with specks of ground coffee beans infused in the ice cream. The sweetness of the ice cream offsets the bitterness of the coffee beans. Unlike the peanut butter ice cream, the espresso bean ice cream leaves no oily after taste.

The ice cream at Maggie Moo’s is on par with what you’d find at Cold Stone Creamery. It will do in a pinch, but I’d rather wait for $1 scoop night at Baskin Robbins for this type of ice cream, or wait and go to Fosselman’s or Lappert’s for the truly super premium stuff.


Maggie Moo’s
3090 Chino Ave.
Chino, CA 91709
(909) 628-5368

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