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Ice Cream

By John Flink

Purveyors of Coronado's cool, sweet treat savor hot summer season

Marketing gurus say that ice cream is the perfect summer product because sales peak around the 4th of July. Pretty much anybody else would say that ice cream is the perfect summer treat because it's cold, creamy and the perfect complement to sizzling summer days. Why else would sales hit the roof during the hottest time of the year? Coronado is blessed with many of the finer things, and ice cream is no exception. Homegrown MooTime Creamery draws crowds downtown and at The Del while Cold Stone Creamery packs ’em in at the Ferry Landing. Down The Strand the chefs at Loews Coronado Bay Resort combine seasonal fruit with fresh herbs to create one-of-a-kind flavors you probably haven’t encountered anywhere else.

Coronado native David Spatafore founded MooTime Creamery in 1998 after working for a dairy company. His job required extensive travel to Europe and the eastern United States where he developed an affinity for the lush, indulgent, no-compromise ice creams served there. After researching several premium ice cream franchises, none of which were quite what he had in mind, Spatafore started from scratch.

“I decided I wanted to make something that was truly my own,” he says today. “Recipe, theme, branding. Everything.”

So he did. Typical of entrepreneurs, Spatafore wore all the hats in the beginning, making the ice cream in the back of the store every morning, serving customers during the day, keeping books in the evening. The kitchen moved into a succession of ever-larger quarters hither and yon around Coronado before coming to rest in its current location behind Village Pizzeria, which Spatafore also owns.

Carved out of part of what used to be the dining room of the Mexican Village restaurant, the kitchen is a warren of rooms, each of which is devoted to some aspect of ice cream-making. Some sport 1950’s-vintage murals of Mexican scenes that Spatafore has been careful to preserve as part of the building’s history. MooTime ice cream is one of very few products manufactured on Coronado.

“Manufacturing is an important part of the economy,” Spatafore says proudly. “I could find cheaper space elsewhere, but here I can walk to work and my kids can visit me. By staying on Coronado, my quality of life is excellent.”

And so is his product. As anybody who has strolled downtown on a warm summer evening can attest, the line at the flagship MooTime shop at 1025 Orange Ave. often stretches down the block.

From its original location on Orange, MooTime has expanded to include stores in La Jolla Village Square and the Hotel Del Coronado, and franchise operations in Hillcrest and Plaza Bonita. Spatafore also has two locations at Qualcomm Stadium and provides ice cream to restaurants around the San Diego area, including Chez Loma and Bistro d’Asia on Coronado and the Prado restaurant in Balboa Park.

Chefs at the Azzura Point restaurant at Loews Coronado Bay Resort tap the resort’s on-site, 3,800-square-foot herb garden to make their seasonal specialty ice creams. Summer menu offerings include pineapple-tarragon, raspberry-lemon verbena and the innocuous-sounding chocolate mint.

Innocuous-sounding because everybody has had pastel-green ice cream with little flecks of chocolate in it. But mint is arguably the flavor people most take for granted. Most people bracket their days with mint-flavored toothpaste, for example. Collectively, humans have forgotten what real mint tastes like.

It tastes green. Real mint has an herbaceous subtlety that instantly reminds the taste buds that it’s not simply a flavor; it’s a plant. A green thing that grows out of the ground.

“We picked ingredients that are true to the summer months, and mint is in season right now,” said Stephen Cummings, the resort’s executive chef. “In the winter we use hardier herbs, like thyme, rosemary and lavender.”

Pineapple and raspberry are in season, too. Cummings and Azzura Point Chef de Cuisine Ron Tolle have combined pineapple with tarragon for a smooth-but-piquant ice cream that sneaks an herbal essence into the sweetness of the pineapple. And raspberry is a natural for lemon verbena, a tree whose leaves provide lemony tang without the acidity of actual lemon.

“By matching the herbs with the fruit, we bring out the best in the fruit and complement the herb,” Tolle explained. “We put these on our a la carte menu and guests are always pleased when they try them. Everybody likes ice cream. Why not be creative?”

The long row of colorful sprinkles, fruits, candies and assorted add-ons that greets customers at Cold Stone Creamery begs for creativity. The possible combinations of ice creams, toppings, cones and cups would be difficult for a mathematician to calculate. Fun, but difficult.

And that's the reaction Frank Caperino wants when customers walk into his store in the Ferry Landing. Opened last summer, the Coronado store is the busiest of Caperino's four Cold Stone stores. The others are in Clairemont Town Square and Fenton Market Place, both in San Diego, and Terra Nova Plaza in Chula Vista.

“We sell creations,” Caperino said, gesturing at the graphics-intensive menu board behind the counter.
“We always have at least 32 creations to choose from, and we rotate them every three months. Or customers can do their own thing. Whatever makes them happiest.”

Caperino discovered Cold Stone during trips to visit a daughter in Scottsdale, Ariz., home to the company’s headquarters. Caperino and his wife Cindy always visited the local Cold Stone, finally leading Cindy to ask her husband to buy her one. After stepping down as president of a Tijuana-based data entry company, he did just that.

That was 1997. With four Cold Stones in his portfolio, Caperino has been awarded two additional franchises, one of which is scheduled to open before the end of the year, he said.

Its location at the Ferry Landing makes the Coronado Cold Stone heavily dependent on tourist traffic, which ebbs and flows in a way that local customers don’t. It’s not surprising that the store chalks up the busiest weeks of Caperino’s four stores. It has also recorded the slowest, he said.

“I probably get 50 percent of my business during June, July and August,” Caperino said. “We have summer days when six or seven employees just keep moving all day. Ice cream is a very satisfying business to be in. Everybody likes premium ice cream.”


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Reprinted with permission from Coronado Lifestyle, "the little magazine with the BIG impact."
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