The names of 30 flavors of homemade ice cream written in neon-colored marker cover the menu board at Carousel Ice Cream in New Haven. The air conditioning inside the store is a welcome relief from the 90-degree temperatures outside a week or so ago.
Items are priced so that patrons can afford to keep coming back: A small cone is $1.50, a medium shake costs $3 and a large Italian ice goes for $2.
“We prefer, instead of making a lot of money at once, to have repeat costumers,” said manager Jamie Trammel. “Anything you want, you can have it.” No regularly priced ice-cream item costs more than $3.50.
Carousel opened at 717 Broadway St. in mid-March after an unseasonal heat surge. Owner and New York state resident Tom Brummond says the store was originally scheduled to open last year. Construction on the building took longer than expected.
All of Carousel’s ice cream is made in house. Its 30 flavors are rotated every month or so.
Unpopular flavors are switched out for new ones.
Popular flavors such as black cherry and fudge brownie stay where they are.
Trammel says she currently favors the tropical paradise.
Carousel also offers ice-cream cakes.
These cakes can be built with ingredients that customers pick out themselves.
The store provides wholesale options as well.
Brummond says that this area of business is slow, but he is trying to expand it.
Carousel offers standard and custom flavors in ice cream, sorbetto and sorbet.
Brummond plans on offering fried, American-style foods at his store soon. Soups and salads will accompany the fare to create a healthier option.
He says these new offerings are an effort to keep up business during the winter months.
Carousel can be a little hard to spot from the street. The only sign on that side of the store is a sandwich board.
Trammel says there used to be a red, inflatable “man” beside the door, but it was taken down because of fire regulations.
But Carousel “is certainly worth finding,” wrote a Fort Wayne reviewer on the restaurant critic site Yelp.
An Auburn reviewer thought that the new additions that Brummond is proposing will create “an easy jump to a five star rating.”
The site gave the shop a 41/2 star overall rating.
