Thomas Sweets

Posted by Edmund in Ice Cream & Gelato, Washington, DC | 0 comments

Price: $3.50-$5.50 for 2-4 scoops.
Address: 3214 P Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20007-2744.

When I was still a young college freshman and had just moved to Georgetown in DC, I really didn’t know much about the culinary scene, so I had to go by a lot of hearsay from the other students. So I remember one day near the end of my freshman year, I was really craving some ice cream, and I asked a friend of mine if there were any really good ice cream parlors nearby. He just looked at me with a bewildered look and asked, “Seriously? You need to ask?” That night, he took me to Thomas Sweets, somewhat of a local student landmark, where you can get the “best”—or at least the most famous—cup of homemade ice cream in the Georgetown area. It was then that my love affair with T Sweets began, and I was an addict for the month or so left in the school year.

Times have changed, though. After studying in Europe and especially Argentina, I returned somewhat of an ice cream/gelato connoisseur, and I just couldn’t really take the traditional overly sweet American ice creams that I typically get at chain brands anymore. That’s why I returned to T Sweets—I wanted to see if it was as good as I thought it had been, or if I had just not known any better in my youth.

As I thought, the ice cream actually is a notch up from the chains, but it didn’t quite live up to the expectations of my youth. There are some positives, to be sure. The texture and consistency tends to be good, as most of the ice cream is a bit on the milky, creamy side. It melts very quickly, but because it’s so soft, it has a really satisfying smoothness to it that really lets some of the flavors come out well. Still, this mostly applies to the more common/popular flavors, particularly the ones with a vanilla base. The more exotic or uncommon flavors often feel harder or more frozen, even to the point that they feel a bit like ice. These odder flavors are also often times weak, uninspired, or just plain bad.

The selection also leaves something to be desired. While the store offers a large variety of flavors, you won’t find anything that you’ve never seen before, and the flavors are often just combinations of toppings with pre-existing flavors instead of flavors based on the taste of the ingredient itself. That may sound confusing, so let me clarify. The pistachio, for example, is not actually a pistachio ice cream, but rather a vanilla ice cream with pistachios mixed in. It’s still great, but it’s hardly what I’d call pistachio.

That all said, if you stick to the basics here, i.e. vanilla or chocolate flavors, you’re in for quite a treat. Otherwise, given the lack of true variety and the sub-par flavors, this ice cream will come off as nothing special or even just plain disappointing.

Flavors I’ve had:

1. Pistachio: This isn’t really a pistachio, but rather a vanilla with pistachios mixed in. That said, it’s really quite good. The vanilla is creamy and smooth, to the point that it’s practically melting in the cup itself. It also has a milky taste to it that really suits it, letting its richness speak instead of its sweetness (i.e. it’s not overly sweet, but the milkiness gives it a nice flavor). The pistachios, though, give it a nice, nuttiness, so that it has a buttery texture and taste to it, with some nice crunch to it. The pistachios help to neutralized a lot of the natural sweetness of the ice cream, making it very distinctively nutty for a vanilla. Still, it’s just not a pistachio ice cream. 3.8/5.0
2. Vanilla with chocolate almonds: Nearly the same as the pistachio ice cream, but the smaller almonds blend just a bit better than the pistachios. The flavor is in general sweeter because of the extra chocolate and since it lacks the nutty fattiness of the thick chunks of pistachio (the almond doesn’t give as much nuttiness and takes up less space in general), but there’s really not much difference. 3.8/5.0
3. Swiss Chocolate Malt: My favorite flavor, hands down. This is again misleading—rather than a chocolate, it’s a vanilla malt flavor with swiss chocolate chips mixed in. Like I said for the pistachio, the vanilla is incredible. All the milky, creaminess comes through again, but this time it’s even smoother, especially since the mix-in flavor suits it so much better and is so much smaller, so the combo just melts in your mouth. The malt flavor really adds a nice refreshing sweetness, too, but it’s not cloying at all. The combo of chocolate, sugar, and milkiness really is a delight. 4.4/5.0
4. Pumpkin: This is horrendous! How a flavor could be so bad, especially after I had such a masterpiece as the swiss chocolate malt, I really just don’t know. The ice cream was hard and frosty, so it clotted up into blots. It was like eating a pumpkin mash instead of ice cream. And the flavor was horrible. The pumpkin barely came through, and what did come through just seemed overshadowed by the frostiness and the gritty texture of the mash. I couldn’t even finish it. 0.0/5.0
5. Café au Lait: This is a light coffee flavor, and as the name implies, it’s extremely on the light side, such that the flavor of the coffee, while noticeable, really doesn’t come through well. While the flavor wasn’t that bad, though, the texture really couldn’t compare to the better ice creams. The texture was much better than the pumpkin’s texture, but it was still on the hard, frosty side, so that it didn’t have the creamy milkiness that made the other flavors a pleasure. 1.0/5.0
6. Chocolate with Chocolate Chips: This is another fantastic flavor. I’m not a fan of chocolate chips, but they do really work well in this combo, as the chocolate base is a milk chocolate with a rich but not overly intense flavor, so it’s not a chocolate overload. In fact, the base chocolate has the same milky taste to it that the vanilla did, and it’s almost as creamy and rich. The milk chocolate flavor is just right, and the focus is never on the sweetness, but rather on the chocolate, which comes through very well. 4.0/5.0
7. Dulce de Leche: This was quite a good flavor. It was a tad cloying because it had actual dulce de leche swirled in, but the sweetness wasn’t that bad. The dulce de leche really was blended in very well, so that the ice cream stayed just as smooth, if not even smoother. And I like that you can actually taste real dulce de leche, which you don’t get in a lot of these dulce de leche flavors. 3.0/5.0
8. Pralines and Cream: I can’t say I was too impressed by this flavor. The cream or vanilla base has the same qualities as some of the other ice creams, but in this case the praline flavor is just cloying. It’s so sweet that it really dominates the smoothness and milkiness of the ice cream in your mouth. 1.7+/5.0

Taste/Flavors: 2.5/5.0
Texture: 3.0/5.0
Selection: 2.0/5.0. Very inconsistent in terms of quality.
Overall Score: 2.6/5.0