We, as a community, need to reassess the serious issue of the best place to get ice cream on campus, as Taharka Bros. Ice Cream has entered the fray. Before we begin, I am limiting this to on campus ice cream options any Goucher community member can get regular access to. So, we are not considering irregularly visiting ice cream trucks, Cold Stone, Holy Cow, Insomnia Cookies, “frozen dairy desserts,” Student Market milkshakes, or any homemade ice cream.
Let us start with Hershey’s in the Dining hall. With four rotating flavors, 3-6 toppings (chocolate chips, mini m&m’s, Oreos, caramel chips, rainbow sprinkles, and sometimes something else), two syrups (Hershey’s chocolate and Smucker’s caramel), self-service, and ease of access to other foods to combo with (waffles, brownies, cookies, etc.), we start with a strong contender.
In terms of cost, it is more of a mixed bag, as it is included in a meal swipe to access the Mary Fisher Dining Hall. The bundling of ice cream with the dining hall also means if you just want ice cream, a whole meal swipe is required. For a first-year student who is required to have at least the 19 meal plan, this will just fold into their $3,980 meal plan cost. However, a visitor who might be swayed to join the Goucher will have to pay 20 dollars to enter our dining hall to experience this.
Hershey’s taste as an ice cream brand is one of the worst large-scale commercially available ice creams. Nevertheless, the variety of flavors means some outperform other brands. I am partial to Chocolate marshmallow and cookies and cream, but cannot deny Graham Central Station’s unique power. The big whopper in this is we can mix and combine multiple flavors at no additional cost (to our wallets, other parts of us may feel it).
“We’re always extremely mindful about potential food allergies, so we have not purchased any ice cream flavors that contain nuts. We are able to choose from about 20 different varieties and tend to stick to flavors we know students love,” general manager of Bon Appetit Goucher David Friendlich informed me.
The dining hall does not offer any of Hershey’s Dairy Free (Oatmazing) “ice creams.” But dairy-free sorbet is sometimes available.
In terms of quantity, the dining hall is normally great as you can take as much or as little as you want. However, I have observed flavors occasionally run out and are not restocked the day of, even if Bon Appetit claims to always have four flavors available.
Manager Friendlich has ordered Ghirardelli syrups in the past for the ice cream station, but they have “been out of stock for a while.” After looking into it, Director of Operations Thomas Brown told me that stocking Ghirardelli would be “exuberantly expensive.”
Cake cones are not for me, but having them as an option is nice. Otherwise, the containers normally provided in the dining hall are small plastic cups and are adjacent to plastic spoons. These are useful when you need to leave Mary Fisher after a middling meal to get to class quickly and throw them out on route. But for environmental reasons, availability reasons, and optimal ice cream consumption reasons, this option is imperfect. Better options, such as washable bowls, mugs, spoons, plates, and cups, exist elsewhere in the dining hall. Mugs and metal spoons are my personal pick even with the inconvenience of having to grab them from across the dining hall.
The urban legend of a caring alumni donating money to permanently guarantee ice cream in the dining hall is false. But any alumni with excess funds could donate to guarantee more ice cream flavors are always available.
I heard rumors that there were six flavors available (consistent chocolate and Vanilla and four other flavors) years ago, when the Orange Room was open. I have also heard there were fountains to clean the scoops, in a way perhaps better than the current system of stagnant water. The water for scoops is supposedly changed by staff every 30 minutes. When the Orange room opens again, I ask the Goucher community to consider what we may gain in ice cream and use our ability to write feedback forms to convince Bon Appetite to open this world to us.
David Friendlich told me, “we always appreciate student feedback and suggestions to improve the dining program at Goucher!”
Overall, Mary Fisher Ice cream gets a rating of nine large bronze scoops covered in as many toppings as I can fit.
Next up, we have Goucher’s spirit/bookstore (with no books in person) and its numerous options. However, most of the frozen items are not ice cream and therefore I did not have to shell out the money necessary to try them for this review. The generic looking frozen dairy dessert sandwich almost fooled me into believing it was an ice cream sandwich.
In terms of cost, the store does not accept dining dollars, only Gopher bucks or American money, but a few items are under 5 dollars.
In terms of pint options: I believe Häagen-Dazs is top tier ice cream and Ben and Jerry’s is above average.
Magnum ice cream bars are a personal favorite, but the only available flavor of double caramel is not my first choice, even though it crushes most ice cream options on campus in terms of taste.
Original Klondike bars are the consistent good option. They unfortunately only sell the original. What would you do for a Klondike bar?
“My Mochi Ice cream,” at a price of $8.68, is interesting to say the least. Strawberry was the only flavor available. It was a strong artificial flavor, with a mochi outside and slightly melted ice cream inside. I hated the texture and taste.
Nestle Toll House chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches are not great as cookie sandwiches, are better made elsewhere, and Nestle is evil. I have joined the Nestlé boycott, so I can only say from my memories of having it five years ago that they are okay.
With many flavors and brands to choose from there is room for variation. But mixing and matching with other foods and flavors is harder than the dining hall. Obviously, you have to provide your own container and serving utensil, unless you decide to eat out of the ice cream tub like a pig.
As a collective, I give the school store ice cream a rating of 2 small golden scoops sitting atop 3 bent weird sapphire scoopers.
For our surprise locations, we have the Gopher Hole and Alice’s. Although currently abandoned, hopes and dreams of imaginary ice cream fill them in. If we do not have hope for more food options on campus what do we have left? I rate this one scoop of the ghost of ice cream future past.
And finally, in the student Market and the talk of the town: Taharka Bros. Ice Cream.
With a cost of six dollars and fifty cents, this might be one of the best deals in the Student Market. Which might be why I have seen it run out already. Ordering a set of 8 pints to deliver to campus through the Tarharka website (without any discounts) costs 65 dollars. Plastic Spoons and bowls are available adjacent to the freezer.
Taharka is arguably the best ice cream on campus. I have only tried a few flavors, starting from chocolate, and it was great. “Mintflix and Chillz” was good except for the few bits I had with way too much peppermint. The cookie dough flavor was solid, but nothing more. Currently Taharka Brothers Ice Cream has the fewest flavors available, but this may change in the future if demand remains high.
It also has multiple non-dairy “ice creams,” but some of the flavors do not match up to their dairy counterparts. Non Dairy-Roasted Strawberry was interesting to say the least. The texture was off, and the taste strange, but I will finish the pint I tell myself after over a week of not doing so.
Taharka is more than an ice cream company; it is a part of the Baltimore community. Its work is beyond the scope of my review, but its history and company structure are worth looking at as we build community together in the Baltimore region.
I give this option four medium silver scoops with a side of a repetitive pick three.
With that, our tour of ice cream locations on campus is over, we have our clear winner, and we can all go back to practicing literary analysis for our interdisciplinary class.
By Max Ravnitzky ’28
