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| - Outside of snakebit Jeni's Ice Cream of Columbus, Ohio, Millie's offers just about the best ice cream you're likely to find in about an eight-hour radius.
A "whole other level" is a pretty dumb phrase to use to describe food, but how do you distinguish A-plus ice cream from solid-A or A-minus ice cream? There just ain't that many food descriptors for ice cream outside of creaminess and depth and richness of flavor. But unless your taste buds and "mouth feel" receptors are busted, you'll recognize as soon as you spoon Millie's stuff into your mouth that it's on a "whole other level" from just about 95 percent of the ice cream you normally consume.
Millie's sharp, white-tiled little Shadyside shop is charming, bright, and airy. The staff on duty was as pleasant as they could be, and very willing to offer sample tastes of whichever flavor might catch your eye. I went with the Vietnamese Coffee, which I gather is a popular one. As an avid consumer of both the Vietnamese café sua da and of coffee ice cream, I didn't recognize that the flavor was especially that of Vietnamese coffee, but it was for damn sure a "whole other level" coffee ice cream.
Only drawback on this day: The shop was playing some modern Broadway show-tune dreck that was so ebullient and saccharine as to be ghastly. Unfortunately, it was so hot on this day outside (this was back in August) that our ice cream would have quickly turned into just cream if we'd fled the scene.
While I was eating it, though, Millie's superb ice cream had the magic power to silence that music in my mind. It's that good.
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