Montgomery’s Best Milkshake

You’re in Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. It’s hot. You want a milkshake. Your Google search of the terms “Montgomery Alabama milkshake” provides, not information about which establishments have tasty ice cream-based concoctions, but rather, information about revolting sex acts. It’s time to change all that.

The Montgomery Advertiser’s rankings of the best milkshakes in Montgomery have Hardee’s at #1, Chik Fil A at #2, and Dairy Queen at #3. As with many of Grandma Advertiser’s “best of” rankings, we totally disagree. We hereby offer you a breakdown of the ultimate truth of the milkshake landscape and we crown a legitimate winner of the title of Best Milkshake in Montgomery.

Chick Fil A – (915 Ann St.) – Loathsome purveyor of advertorial concentration camp humor. Georgia-based chain owned by right-wing super Christians. Refuses to sell food (and milkshakes) on Sunday because of ancient traditions regarding rest dating back to book of Genesis. Still, we were told by a trusted source that the peach milkshakes were “just like home-made ice cream.” We got one peach and one chocolate. Unless you are into 7-11 diabetes-inducing “Mega Gulp” sizes, take the small. Small is still plenty big. Both came with whipped cream and cherry on top. The price is good. For two, we spent $3.50.

The peach was not “just like home-made ice cream.” It had good little giblets of peach in it, and was pleasant, extremely sweet but not cloying, and easy to drink through a straw. The chocolate was better, even though it didn’t have a super rich chocolate flavor. Overall they balanced thickness and flavor, didn’t seem to be full of artificial ingredients (though we’re sure they were), and were affordable and good. The texture was nice and it didn’t melt too quickly. Stephen gave them between a 6.5 and an 7 out of 10, and Kate rated them an 6.

Sonic – (2025 Carter Hill Rd.) – You drive in and order at the box. They bring you your stuff. Easy & straightforward, and you don’t need to idle your car. No, really. Please don’t. We went to the Sonic at Montgomery’s Worst Intersection™ – the absurd chaos of the place where Carter Hill meets Narrow Lane meets Mulberry. We ordered caramel and chocolate. The caramel was really good – nice and thick, with a caramel flavor that wasn’t overpowering or chemical-ly. The chocolate wasn’t too rich and was a bit thinner. Both were good and more than enough shake comes in the small size. Sonic offers a variety of frozen & ice cream treats, as pictured in the menu here. Kate gave them an 6.5 out of 10 – they were very good, but lacked that “wow” of a really great milkshake. Stephen rated them an 6.

Bruster’s – (6835 Vaughn Rd) – Stephen ordered oreo. Kate ordered strawberry cheesecake. The list of flavor options is dazzling. The Bruster’s shakes put the emphasis on the milk. They’re creamy and thick, but also have the ice crystals that add that “milkshakey” texture. It flows through the straw easily. There’s no aftertaste. The prices are reasonable. The only complaint is that a “regular” is quite large and is too much for a person us to drink in a single sitting. Then again, with Alabama the second fattest state in the nation, many people probably think that these milkshake are too small. They are delicious. Almost certainly the best in the city. 9 out of 10.

 

Very large milkshakes

Zolo’s - (2055 Carter Hill Rd) CLOSED – We really wanted to write this place up.

Marble Slab Creamery (7929 Vaughn Rd) - This is the one in the Hellscape, over near the Rave movie theater. We had high expectations for our chocolate shake, if only because it seems unfair for the purposes of competition to compare a milkshake that costs $5 to one from a fast food place costing less than $2. Yet, here is a case where the extra expense does not befit the resulting product. Not worth the time, money and effort.

In particular, I really didn’t like watching the preparation process. The bored lady behind the counter started by pouring some kind of clear mystery fluid from an unmarked bottle. This stuff (simple syrup?) went into the mixer before the milk. Gross. I do not want mystery liquids in my shake. The use of real ice cream is good, but the end result is way too thick. You can’t pull it through the straw. Further, there are no tasty ice crystals, so you basically have your giant cup of mostly-solid ice cream, whipped through with suspicious liquid, and you’ve got to wait for it to melt or go at it with a spoon. Oh, and there’s a slight coating on your mouth lining after you’ve decided you’ve had enough. Glop, glop, glop, pass. 4 out of 10.

Cold Stone Creamery (7240 East Chase Parkway) – I had Milk and Cookies. She had Lotta Caramel Latte. Our description of both: “outstanding.” The purchasing process is quite an exercise in pretension. We cracked up about how the advertising signs use three umlauts to spell German Chocolate Cake. There are three sizes, each linked to desire: You’ve got the $4.09 “like it,” the $4.49 “love it,” and the $4.99 “gotta have it.” No word on future plans for a $7 “will kill for milkshake” size. But we do commend the Creamery for being able to monetize the distance between like and lust. Hey generations of poets, suck it. The answer is $1.

The PB&C (peanut butter and chocolate) flavored milkshake at the Creamery made headlines recently for being equal in nutritional content to 68 pieces of bacon. Yes, really.

End result of driving to the Hellscape and waiting on these shakes? Tasty, but it’s no Bruster’s. 8 out of 10.

Dairy Queen (Atlanta Highway) – These are sort of the baseline archetypes of the modern Montgomery milkshake. The ice cream is better than very good, verging on great. It’s that soft serve stuff you know so well from your trips to the DQ. But the flavors aren’t eye-popping. Sure, you get a few other choices when ordering, including pineapple, but our ultimate reactions to the chocolate and strawberry were mixed. On one hand, they were quite good and really improved our mega-hot day. On the other, we had to drive a good way to get them and were somewhat nonplussed with the power of the flavor. The chocolate was the better of the two but did not have an especially rich taste. The strawberry did have tasty bits of berry (risking straw clog), but it was just that packaged, probably once-frozen “berry sauce” stuff they keep in the tub next to the fudge and other toppings. We decided that the shakes were great, but probably not as good as the more famous DQ offering, The Blizzard. And yet, the shakes made us happy to the point that we were delighted to be writing reviews of milkshakes, even as we said that no decent shake could be worse than the DQ baseline. Rating? 6 of 10.

Flip’s Uptown Grill (Atlanta Highway) – We’ve never actually set foot in the Uptown mainstay that is Flip’s (check that hilarious website). We’ve heard they have good breakfast food, but we were there for one reason only: a Jiggle. That is what Flip’s calls the small size milkshake they serve. We were not entirely sure how to react to this news, much less how to react to the Flip’s employee who seemed dead set on forcing us to say the word “Jiggle” into the order box. Finally we just mumbled something about how we wanted two of those, one chocolate and one vanilla. The size-that-shall-not-be-spoken is actually perfect. The shakes themselves are great. They taste like milkshakes, not just whipped up ice cream. The chocolate could have been more chocolate-y, but otherwise we liked our, um, milkshakes just fine. The difference between these and the Bruster’s shakes could be chalked up to a difference in ice cream, but Flip’s does use the ever-reliable and tasty Bluebell, so it’s a close call. Quite tasty, although next time we’ll just say, “give us your smallest size” and take it from there. 7 of 10.

Hardee’s — Hardee’s is one of those fast food milkshakes that used to be like, well, average fast food milkshakes. The kind you grow up on. They used to come in the same sizes as the drinks. And you’d have your basic trifecta of flavors: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. Well, some marketing jerk got a hold of the Hardee’s brass and told them that they needed to specialize and start advertising “hand-dipped shakes.” Now, they only offer one size and have tripled the cost of shakes. Thing is, aside from serving them in new kinds of plastic cups and spraying some whipped cream on top of them, they sort of taste the same as they used to. And that’s not good. Our recent order (a strawberry without whipped cream) turned our conversation to the oil dispersants being used in the Gulf by BP — as in, what they may taste like. The shake, stunningly voted the Best in Montgomery, by the readers of Grandma Advertiser, tasted like a coagulated sugar carpet. This made us think about Krusty the Clown’s notorious fast food franchise from The Simpsons, where instead of milkshakes they sell patented Krusty Partially Gelatinated Non-Dairy Gum-Based Beverages. 3 of 10.

McDonald’s — We did not sample the McDonald’s milkshakes.

Final rankings (in order): Bruster’s, Cold Stone Creamery, Flip’s, Sonic, Chick-Fil-A, Dairy Queen, Marble Slab, Hardee’s

Publix: British food section

One of the nice things about our neighborhood is proximity to grocery stores. We are within a short drive of three. We’re not so keen on the Piggly Wiggly, which is our closest grocery store. We’ve always liked the Winn-Dixie at Montgomery’s Worst Intersection™ and its recent remodel (the subject of an upcoming post) has made it even better. Winn-Dixie does double coupons every day. They give generously to local neighborhood associations in support of community picnics and other events. Their website has the predictable “sustainability” page to rep their corporate green credentials, but if you look a little closer, boy are there a lot of weird links on there. To personal blogs, some of which seem to be organized around selling stuff on Etsy. This makes me like Winn-Dixie more. Also the people who work there are super nice.

But there are some things you just can’t get at the Winn-Dixie. Like the various vegetarian products we need to get our daily hexane intake. Publix just has a bigger selection of veggie dogs (the cheapo Smart Dogs as well as the larger, more expensive ones). They have tempeh, and even though they stopped carrying the good tempeh (the kind that didn’t come pre-marinated), they are still the only tempeh game in town. Finally, perhaps because Publix is larger, there are a lot of things they sell that Winn-Dixie does not. Like Arborio rice. And fresh-baked bagels (well, sometimes). And ponzu sauce.

Let’s say that you want to get some ponzu sauce, perhaps to mix with sambal oelek and lemon wedges for delightful spicy edamame like your friend Amber makes. In this case, you would go to Publix’s ethnic foods zone where you would find items for Asian foods (including a new and expanded Indian food section), items for “Hispanic” foods (including not a single decent jarred salsa – RIP Bruno’s if only for your bountiful supply of Mrs. Renfro’s Habanero Salsa), and the newest addition to the Publix Ethnic Rainbow: what seems to be a British Food Section.

That’s right. British food. Because there is a large collection of expats here in Montgomery jonesing for salad cream and traditional onions? Because the store somehow ended up with a surplus of strangely flavored HP sauces? You can’t get an organically grown potato this side of the Boulevard but you can buy several flavors of Malteasers? Is this for real? The first time we saw it, we were pretty sure the section was a joke – maybe some kind of grocery store hack. We grabbed a ginger beer and giggled. Which ginger beer was awesome and is now, in classic Publix style, no longer stocked.

Colorful beans!

Digestive!

Malteasers! Just like in Graham Greene!

Salad cream! Traditional onions!

Reed Books – Birmingham, AL

You live in Montgomery. You like to read. So far, so good. Lots of nice places to sit and read, plenty of shady trees and so forth – a good city to have a reading habit. Sometimes you like to buy additional books to read. This will be less great, especially if you like to physically go to bookstores and browse what’s available. Montgomery’s just not a good bookstore town.

CAVEATS: (1) Capitol Book & News. Our wonderful neighborhood bookstore has a great collection, extraordinarily helpful staff and a fantastic sale room, but they stock all new stuff, and sometimes one just can’t afford new books (especially on a non-profit salary). (2) New South Books. Close to work, with a delightfully retro Montgomery Book Factory sign above the entrance, every part of this bookstore makes a fun visit. New and used are in the same shop, which is a definite plus. Alas, many of the books are rare and thus super-spendy. Also the collection is pretty small. (3) Trade ‘N Books. But only if you’re into genre fiction, which we really aren’t. (4) Big Chains. Yes, we know that there’s a Barnes & Noble in town, also Books-A-Million. Look, both of these are big mega-chains (strike one), and not even the good big mega-chain bookstore (that’s Borders, strike two), and while you can find a lot of stuff at them (well, at Barnes & Noble … Books-A-Million deserves its local nickname Books-A-Dozen), you’re just as likely to be confronted in an unpleasant way by the massive self-help section and any number of coffee table books featuring glossy photos of military airplanes. (5) Religious Bookstores. There seem to be a lot of these in town. Haven’t been. Not planning to go. (6) Friends of the Library Bookstore. Haven’t been. Really want to go.

So, you want to look at some used books. Perhaps some other ephemera as well? Get yourself up to Birmingham and visit Reed Books [aka The Museum of Fond Memories]. It’s an entirely overwhelming experience. Not just for the books (the collection is eclectic, heavy on the childrens’/young adult lit, and is definitely not for someone looking to pick up a Grisham paperback for the road), but also for the stuff. The dizzying, crazy variety of stuff. There’s no way pictures can do the place justice. It’s as if every cool garage sale in the world decided suddenly to merge, colliding in a giddy explosion of plastic Santas and statues and cheese graters and matchbooks and trading cards and old brochures and campaign signs and tiny boxes that hold other tiny boxes.

And then there are the personal effects. There are at least two banks of postal boxes at the front of the store, with each cubby holding, well, stuff. Letters, mostly, and pictures and postcards. So to call it “stuff” is the biggest insult in the world, frankly, since each cubby contains dozens of memories, some probably treasured, some disposable, but all crazily archived here for you to look over in wonder. In just a few minutes standing at the letterboxes, I read a letter from a pastor’s wife in Tuscaloosa to a man in Montgomery, a letter from an army cadet to his brother from training camp, a Christmas card, part of a Standard Oil work diary, and looked at a few dozen photographs – each one poignant, special, and still discarded somehow to end up here, saved and for sale and browsing. I bought a few photos for a project I’m working on. I also bought a book for my boyfriend and a great Modern Library copy of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class.

It’s a magical place, part bookstore, part haven for lost and wandering memories. Well worth the drive and a long, long afternoon.

The view from the street

Santa!

Down the center aisle

The mailboxes of wonder

Classic Americana – boy with collie and glove – dated 1947

My favorite of the found pictures

Two girls kissing while an excited man points. Some things never change.

Health Wise Foods

Way out in the wastelands of the Atlanta Highway, just as you’re about to get to the sketchy Goodwill, is Health Wise Foods, billing itself as the largest and oldest natural foods store in Montgomery. We weren’t sure what to expect. So many “health food” stores end up being collections of weird, dusty supplements, like a low-rent GNC or your crazy aunt’s medicine cabinet. Really wonderful natural foods stores, with groceries and stuff you might actually eat, are super hard to find. We were spoiled by living close to Manna Grocery up in Tuscaloosa, and hoped to find a similar place here in Montgomery.

To be fair, the Montgomery grocery stores (at least the Zelda Road Publix) have a massively better selection of vegetarian and specialty food items than the grocery stores in Tuscaloosa. In particular, the Zelda Road Publix makes the Tuscaloosa Publix seem like a low-rent 7-11 by comparison. We have been thrilled to find all the fake meats and soy products we could really ask for at Publix.

We were happy to find that Health Wise is not solely (or even mostly) in the dietary supplements business. There’s a produce case with some produce supplied by local organic farmer Gary Weil’s Red Root Farm, and produce is 30% off on Sundays. There are some specialty items in the case … we’re not sure how to use burdock, but might be interested in learning, and there were also some nice looking rutabagas. The freezer case is pretty okay – lots of the usual suspects: Amy’s pizzas, organic frozen waffles, wheat-free things. There were some tasty-looking frozen entrees like vegetarian shepherd’s pie in the case, but they were pretty spendy. They also had Boca’s veggie bratwurst in the refrigerator case, which you don’t see that often.

The canned goods aren’t that great, and there’s not much there you can’t get elsewhere (ok, maybe the Bragg’s). But the main section of the store has a lot of great bulk foods and spices, including hard-to-find stuff like umeboshi plums and quinoa. I bought a big bag of Frontier tellicherry peppercorns for less than I would have paid to order them online.

Other notable finds: Stonewall’s Jerquee, in a variety of flavors. So salty and good! Also good soy sauce and Tom’s toothpaste (otherwise only available at Wal-Mart, and nobody wants that).

Although refrigerated produce is outstanding to have, it’s no Manna. Chiefly because there’s no deli, and Manna’s got all that great food they make on site. But the people were super nice. And there’s a good selection of organic personal care products (Dr. Brenner’s soap in the big jug, things like that). It’s not a substitute for a grocery store, but seems like it will make a fine supplement to the corporate options available. Plus, they make it pretty clear that they’re happy to order whatever you want that they don’t already stock. Well worth the trip up the Atlanta Highway.

Monday Thrift Stores

We went back. Even though it was Columbus Day, we managed to find two things open – first up was the Montgomery Rescue Mission Bargain Center. It’s a mixed bag. There was some nice furniture there, including a lovely couch, several pianos (one of which was actually close to being in tune), and a lot of end tables. All the furniture was reasonably priced. Not so the used books. They were, in general, the kind of sorry selection you find at most thrift stores -  a romance novel here, a self-help book there, a whole load of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books with their groovy tapestry/deco covers, and so forth. The whole lot was WAY overpriced, and erratically so. A bizarre and profoundly sexist “manual” for husbands written in 1959 (Chapter 2: “Wives say the darndest things”) was $10, even though there were multiple pages torn out. Meanwhile, a hardcover first edition of Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth was $2. Bizarre. Probably not a lot of demand for tracts on the abolition of nuclear weapons down on Mount Meigs road. Anyway, no dressers here (or none that we wanted), and no Halloween costume materials either. I did buy a cool hanging wire planter thing for $1.98.

Next we went to the Eastbrook Flea Market. It’s across from the Pizza Perfect on Coliseum, which S assures me is perfectly nasty. This is a cool place – if you’ve been to other “antique malls,” you know what to expect – a bunch of booths ranging from the very expensive to the reasonably priced. On several occasions we wished we’d brought the camera – especially when confronted with the wonderful records for sale. We did manage to find a very reasonably priced dresser for much less than we expected to spend, and a few fifty cent books, including a lovely coloring book of Palestine with stamps.

Overall, a successful trip. No Halloween costume materials yet, but there’s still some more time to shop. I’ve set up a Google map of Montgomery thrift stores – if you’re interested, please contribute stores and comments. We’ll update the map as we go.

Sunday Thrift Stores

We’re looking for a dresser. Nothing special, just a larger dresser than the one that S now has, to hold various overflow items. We found one on Craigslist, but it was mammoth and completely unwieldy. So off to the secondhand stores! I’m a big believer in furnishing this way. When I first moved to Tuscaloosa, I brought exactly two chairs with me. I got a few things from IKEA, and everything else came from CL and thrift stores. Confidence is high. Alas, our plans are foiled by God. Isn’t that always the way?

We find ourselves across the street from Frazer Methodist on the Atlanta Highway. We’re stopped. Traffic has to wait while cops escort churchgoers slowed considerably by the weight of their worship experience across the street to dine at Arbys, Jim and Nick’s, Captain D’s. We are patient. Also a bit lost. Thrift shopping was  considerably easier in Tuscaloosa, in Birmingham, or in Austin, Seattle, or any of the other places we’ve lived. Not so Montgomery. The thrift stores are more spread apart than you might think, difficult to locate online, and – here’s the important bit – not, generally speaking, open on Sundays. We hadn’t really considered this. I’m neither “churched” nor from here, but probably should have known better.

Google reveals this list of Montgomery-area thrift stores. Notice how they’re all around the city – a big ring, with the exception of the Montgomery Rescue Mission Bargain Center (closed on Sundays, but looks pretty darn good from peeking in the windows). We drove by some of the highlights, and will go back another day when it’s religiously permissable to buy secondhand goods. Stay tuned for more thrift store reporting.