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| - TL;DR - Ice cream is so-so (way too sweet, coconut too fake & strong), charcoal cone is awesome, ube-nut will turn your poo very dark green
Full Review:
I love taro EVERYTHING, so when I heard about this place, I had to give them a visit.
I went there on a Saturday about half an hour after they were scheduled to open, and there was already a lengthy line. It wasn't as bad as it looked though, because they ask people to leave a wide space open, in front of their neighbours so as not to block their traffic. Unfortunately for me, the three well-behaved kids in front of me were joined by 4 adults, but that was just my bad luck. I ended up waiting about half an hour and it was a hot day.
The ice cream, while not cheap, is competitively priced with other fancy/novelty ice cream shops in Toronto. $6-9 seems to be the going rate for a novelty ice cream in Toronto these days.
The charcoal ice cream and cone are a visual delight for sure. I got ube-nut (i.e. purple and black, i.e. taro and coconut) in a charcoal cone. It looked cool, passersby gave me envious looks, and I even got asked about it on the streetcar.
Flavour-wise, which is my primary concern in any food adventure...it was just ok. The coconut was a lot stronger than the taro and kind of overpowered it, in my opinion. And it was just way, too sweet - positively cloying. The coconut also tasted quite synthetic, which is understandable given they can't really use creamy, white coconut milk to make a black ice cream. But I prefer natural coconut flavour, even if it's way subtler/less noticeable. I wish they made a different flavour with their charcoal ice cream instead, that would allow the flavour to shine while maintaining its colour. Black sesame seems to be the obvious choice, but I guess too many places have already done that one.
Cow's Cowconut Cream Pie tastes a lot better, in my opinion - I'm pretty sure they use flavouring to enhance the natural coconut cream/milk they use in their recipe, but the result is really subtle so you almost can't tell. In terms of the specific combo of taro-coconut ice cream, I really do prefer Taro With A Twist at Arctic Bites. The flavour is much subtler and the sweetness is much more appropriate, in my opinion. Plus I do prefer hard ice creams over soft serves.
While the ice cream was just so-so to me, I really liked the cone. Again, it looked cool, which made it fun to eat. But I also noticed that it was much crispier/more brittle than regular waffle cones, which I appreciated. They also didn't get soggy as quickly/easily as regular waffle cones. And I liked how fresh they were. Best of all, they put a dollop of marshmallow creme at the bottom of each one to seal it, so your ice cream won't leak! That's GENIUS. Best idea ever. Because who hasn't had ice cream leak out the bottom of their fresh waffle cone before while they were still working on the top? So smart!!!
The people running the shop were also very nice - great customer service.
All in all, I'm glad I came here because it satisfied my curiosity, even though I don't think the ice cream was really worth the half hour wait.
Also, TMI anecdote: the ice cream definitely had a, um, interesting effect on my, um, stool. For a minute, I was afraid I was excreting bile/that my liver was failing, because mine was, um, a very, very dark green. Then I remembered I had this ice cream earlier in the day. Sorry for the visual!
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