Say the words, “Ice cream.”
Didn’t that make you happy?
Imagine you’re 19 years old or so, and you work in one of the most popular ice cream spots in Pasadena, if not the entire San Gabriel Valley.
How happy would that be?
But the thing about ice cream is that it’s kind of a regional thing, and every area of a city or a country, for that matter, is going to have its favorite ice cream.
Locally, Handel’s Homemade Ice Cream is right up there at the tops with Pasadenans.
But Handel’s Ice Cream, unlike the cheeseburger, was not invented in Pasadena.
The story is that, in the summer of 1945, Alice Handel of Youngstown, Ohio, created the brand using fresh fruit from her backyard garden and her own personal recipes. That homemade ice cream quickly became a neighborhood favorite. That neighborhood became a city, and a state, and then a nation — hooked on her creation. Handel’s was born.
There are actually two locations nearby where you’re reading right now. There is the well-known East Pasadena location, and there is another in nearby La Cañada.
We visited the East Pasadena location recently to watch young brother-and-sister act, Aram and Emma Karamanian, dishing out the ice cream to a crowd that immediately began forming as soon as the store opened at noon. It didn’t matter that the skies were still dark gray and rain was threatening.
As lines formed outside the place, each of them took a turn at explaining to us the secret of Handel’s popularity without revealing any secrets.
First of all, what is everybody’s favorite, we wondered?
“The strawberry, chocolate and vanilla are always going to be the top three,” said Aram. “But after that, strawberry cheesecake, maybe Vanilla Oreo? Hmm, Vanilla Oreo probably, but it always switches every month,” he said. “Vanilla Oreo and Mint chocolate chip, for sure. Those are the top two. Maybe Mint chocolate chip.”
That’s how it is when you work at an ice cream shop where every flavor is extraordinary.
We walked into the back area of the shop where the ice cream is actually created. Aram pointed out, “A crew comes in every morning around 8 o’clock to start making the ice cream, and usually by noon they are still going, but it’s winter right now and it’s a little bit slower.“
Aram also estimated that the shop sees at least 300 customers a day. That seemed conservative, he admitted.
But in explaining the store’s appeal, Aram made sure to emphasize that the ice cream is made fresh every single day.
As he pointed out, “Some large ice cream chains have central locations, from where the ice cream is shipped out to the stores. And so their ice cream has preservatives. But not us, everything is fresh every day. That makes our ice cream really creamy.“
And because it’s the week of Valentine’s Day the shop has a lot of pink flavors available (Is there a red ice cream?).
Aaron then walked us through the creation of our four-scoop sampler in honor of Valentine’s Day week.
“We chose chocolate covered strawberry, cherry magnolia, cherry cordial, and then the red raspberry sherbet for you,” he said, carefully scooping the flavors into a clear plastic basket.
If you’re there anytime around Thursday, and you’re looking to impress the one you love, you’re gonna be walking away with one of those baskets, just like we got.
But that wasn’t all we got, as Aram very happily provided an additional chocolate pop, which Emma, just as happily, explained to us.
“We always have a flavor of the month,” she said. “And right now it’s chocolate covered strawberry ice cream, and we just dip it in chocolate. And it’s like a frozen little cake pop, but it’s frozen.” And it’s a sizable scoop that’s dipped into the chocolate, putting your basic cake pops to shame, if you will.
While we were offered toppings for our ice cream, that seemed a bit like putting rims on a Mercedes, if you know what we mean, so we took our ice cream au naturel.
Then, knowing that we happened to have a long drive ahead of us that afternoon, we took a few minutes, well, more than a few minutes, to enjoy some of the ice cream before keeping both hands on the wheel.
The freshness of the ice cream, and the natural sweetness of the fruit is pretty extraordinary at first bite.We probably finished half before heading off on our drive.
Later that night, we retrieved the ice cream from our hotel room refrigerator—refrigerator, not freezer. Thus, our ice cream was a thick, magnificent soup. Soup should always taste this good.
Let’s review: Handel’s has a plethora of flavors made fresh every day, along with novelties like ice cream sandwiches, and their frozen bananas topped with peanuts. And everything tastes like your best summer day.
It’s Valentine’s Day week. Go get in line right now.
Handels’ Homemade Ice Cream is at 3405 East Foothill Boulevard in Pasadena.
