The Good: Good ice cream, Generally clean locations.
The Bad: More expensive than many local places for about the same selection.
The Basics: A mundane ice cream parlor chain, Baskin Robbins is not likely to satisfy those who seriously love ice cream.
I love ice cream. Those who read my many, many food reviews undoubtedly know that because of how frequently I reference ice cream and how I own things like an ice cream maker and milkshake maker, which I use with remarkable frequency. As such, it might seem odd that I don't recommend Baskin Robbins, the premiere chain of ice cream parlors in the United States.
The reason for this is remarkably simple: Baskin Robbins has a very cold corporate feel to its chain and its 31 flavor advertisement is frequently true, but uninspired. If you've been to one Baskin Robbins, you've been to pretty much all of them. As a result, I tend to prefer the smalltown charm of independent ice cream parlors, wherever I find them. Local ice cream shops tend to have competitive prices and at least as good of a selection as the major chains. I'd rather my money were spent there. That said, Baskin Robbins is not bad, it is just boring.
Location
Baskin Robbins ice cream parlors are located throughout the United States. As one who travels a lot, I seem to find them mostly in strip malls, shopping centers and within mall settings. I most recently encountered Baskin Robbins while traveling to Michigan and my experience there was utterly unremarkably.
Baskin Robbins tends to be organized like a fast food restaurant with a place to order ice cream and only limited seating. The one I visited most recently only had five tables with high stools at them! The entire restaurant has a neutral, family friendly atmosphere. Baskin Robbins, outside the initial counter where one may choose to go further in or take their ice cream out, have some locations that are more sit-down restaurants where customers are waited on at a counter and then they seat themselves.
Baskin Robbins tends to be modestly decorated. The color scheme is usually a perky pink, white and purple which helps breed product recognition wherever these locations are found.
Waitstaff
Baskin Robbins has a cafeteria or fast food organization to it, so those who make the ice cream treats tend to be the ones who also cashier at the end of the line. The ice cream distributors do not wait on the customer after they finish making their order.
Food
Baskin Robbins is a very basic ice cream parlor. Sure, it has 31 flavors of hard ice cream ranging from the mundane chocolate, vanilla and strawberry to the more exciting mint chocolate chip and butter pecan. But my experiences have shown that they seldom have truly incredible flavors, like a realistic birthday cake ice cream or ones that mix flavors like chocolate and coconut (like Ben & Jerry's – and I – do). The result is a pretty mundane experience. Most frequently, I end up getting an ice cream cone at Baskin Robbins. Given how they usually only have the Mint Chocolate Chip representing mint ice creams, that is what I tend to get.
Baskin Robbins also offers milkshakes. The milkshakes at the Baskin Robbins locations I have been to are made with softserve ice cream and thus are more limited to chocolate, vanilla and whatever frozen yogurt flavors they have on tap. This is a disappointment to me as I tend to like more creative shakes based on more interesting flavors (again, like mint). The speed that the milkshakes are mixed at as a result of using softserve allows them to be made quicker, but the result is far less fantastic than having more creative flavors.
Finally, Baskin Robbins offers pretty limited sundae options. Because there is a fast food feel to the restaurant, most often Baskin Robbins sundaes are just scoops of ice cream plopped into a dish, covered with a limited amount of sauce – chocolate, hot fudge, butterscotch, etc. – and a small dollop of whipped cream. While this technically is a sundae, it lacks the flair of a better laid-out sundae and it is substantively little different from a dish of ice cream.
That said, Baskin Robbins ice cream is not actually bad, it is just bland. The flavors seem to be culled from the most widely appealing flavors as opposed to the most interesting. The ice creams are made with real milk and are good, but they are not much different from any ice cream one could buy at the supermarket. That makes me ask, “why spend more to have someone else scoop it?”
Overall
Ultimately, Baskin Robbins is a very simple chain which does not have an indispensable culinary product I cannot get elsewhere. I'll stick to local ice cream shops.
For other restaurant reviews, please be sure to visit my takes on:
Long John Silvers
Bruegger's Bagels
4.5/10
For other food reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |
No comments:
Post a Comment