Promotion: Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day

Location: 1634 Orrington Ave., Evanston, IL, 60202 (map); phone: (847) 869-2640

Rating: 4 out of 5 – good

Eaten: 1 block away

After random tastings of Ben & Jerry’s socially aware fare over the years, it just felt right to swoop in to a Scoop Shop and begin to more systematically sample its sweets. The cone, at least, came free. (As well as the ice cream, though it was hard to tell exactly how much my scoops usually cost, if they cost anything in addition to the cone; the waffle cone was clearly listed as regularly selling for 99 cents). Not encumbered by the restrictions of price, I had come to check out the simple charm of a Chunky Monkey, as B&J’s concoction of “Banana Ice Cream with Fudge Chunks & Walnuts” is known. After making the Chunk my first priority, I had come to learn that it was apparently a favorite flavor of a friend of mine, so the urgency with which I waited ten minutes in line — out the door in downtown Evanston — became all the more acute as the metered minutes ran down for my publically parked car. Thankfully, the Monkey pulled through, oddly pleasing in a way… much like eating banana nut bread even.

Fans of artificially flavored banana milk might be surprised by the natural fruit tastes subtly expressed in the cream, leading to the sensation I mentioned earlier of eating nut bread with the walnuts spread in good proportion in the mix. Wide but thin wafers of fudge round out the Chunky Monkey’s main ingredients, but don’t distract from the overall impression that its creators weren’t going for something that was too sweet to enjoy in large quantities. This Monkey’s not mind-blowing, but it serves as a sort of frozen comfort food someone could reliably order and still have a good time with. Steady, not flashy.

Oh, and if you were wondering where I finished this, the aforementioned line winding in and out of the shop left no room to even comfortably stand and consume my free treat indoors. Instead, I walked about a block to an outdoor dining area set up for the Flat Top Grill over on Church Street. You might notice the restaurant’s placemat resting on the table in each picture’s background above. So I thank the proprietors of Flat Top for a place to finish my ice cream on a bright but briskly cool spring day.