By now, anyone who has read more than two of my articles knows that I am a sentimental softy perhaps born in the wrong era. I work in technology, but close my eyes and see the 20s. I see coal-fed trains cutting through the center of town across the sandlot where boys with big cuffs and t-shirts play ball. I see deep-welled Ford pick-ups with wooden running boards hauling milk in lead bottles. I see long counters with stools populated with people sipping straws while they peer at the man in the lab coat and bowtie pulling the handle of the soda spritzer. I see hand-turned cylinders spinning larger cylinders of ice and rock salt. I open my eyes and taste that ice cream, here and only here.
Part of me feels like I have been looking for Lottie’s since my own contingency of friends in the 80s would go the Wilders house on our block and take turns spinning the ice cream. Little did I know that Deb Phillips was doing the same thing in Los Angeles.
Lottie’s is owned by Deb Phillips and Ceaser Angobaldo, and like so many of the places I find to write about, was established on the foundation of passion. “Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life.” (Thanks Dad. Great advice)
Lottie is Deb’s maternal Grandmother and the exact person that belongs in the “happy place,” I see when I close my eyes. She baked, that’s what she did. Then she taught her daughter, and then she taught her granddaughters. The best part is, it stuck with all of them. The girls are all involved in food—be it preparation or education, they have not strayed from Grandma’s lesson.
After some time in the culinary program at DVC (the reason that we got her from LA), Deb realized that she needed something more focused than “food” preparation and eventually found herself at Penn State University, taking a short course on ice cream; learning the technical and machine side of the business. On April 23, 2013 she opened her doors in Walnut Creek and began to share her life’s passion with consumers.
Here’s why I choose Lottie’s. I have never considered myself to have a sweet tooth. I don’t seek dessert. I will pass on cake more often than I will accept it. I bought Blowpops from the ice cream man instead of popsicles; however I have a need (not desire) to visit Lottie’s on a regular basis and my wife and child help reap the benefits.
They make everything just past the counter, on-site, every day. They pasteurize their own ingredients, right there. They cook their own praline peanuts and toffee right next to the batches. This is why they make only four or five flavors daily.
One thing they do that will not be seen, and not be talked about but will allow the consumer to understand why, on quick inspection, their scoops may look smaller than the competitors’, is they literally pump less air into the process. Trust me, this matters! What we get in return is flavor that will (it did for me) blow minds! What else we get are people without a sweet tooth changing their song for the first time in their lives.
When I look at a plastic, never-been-changed flavor board that says “ginger ice cream,” I usually get a mammoth scoop of something that has a faint suggestion of something ginger, deeply buried. But when I look at the hand written (that day) chalk board at Lottie’s that says “ginger,” the hair stands up on my arm and I seriously have to ask myself if I’m ready for this.
Deb says it best: “When you narrow the focus within, you can be infinitely creative.”
Lottie’s Creamery
1414 N Main St, Walnut Creek, CA 94596
Phone: (925) 472-0723
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