Price: $0.99(+?); paid – $0.00
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.
