Found: Awesome frozen custard!

So The Baby Girl and I are darting around creation yesterday.

To Norfolk to pick up our CSA (and for a bison burger at the 5 Points Community Farm Market café – yum!).

To Virginia Beach to pick up some vinegary BBQ sauce and mahogany-colored spices from Nelson Colwell, a BBQ pit master whom I’m writing a story about (look for that tale of obsession on Labor Day weekend)

To Target for a pink camouflage lunchbox cuz we know that school is going to start no matter how much we hope otherwise.

After all that, The Baby Girl pointed out that the only real option on a cloudy, muggy day was to stop for ice cream. And ice cream epicure that she is, she steered us toward Bravo’s, a tiny little place in an aging strip shopping center on Rosemont Road in Virginia Beach, just south of I-264, between a dry cleaner and a biker shop.

Somehow I’d expected a shiny chain restaurant . . . it seems that almost all ice cream places these days are shiny chain restaurants, which is OK, I guess, but I miss the personality of place.

Anyway, when we walked in it reminded me of my mom’s old bakery. A collection of all things lady bug covered a couple of shelves. The menu on the wall behind the counter wasn’t factory correct, rather seemed to have grown at the whim of the custard maker.

Actually, make that frozen custard maker. Owners Bryan and Ravae (in the picture) are from Milwaukee, which they describe as “The Frozen Custard Capital of the World.” They make I just like people do in Wisconsin, they said, using lots of eggs and heavy cream. Every day, they have chocolate and vanilla, plus a special flavor.

On Sunday, it was butter pecan. I had mine in a crunchy waffle cone, a single (but generous) scoop ($1.99) of ivory-colored ice cream with chunks of pecan. It was smoother than regular ice cream, sweet and creamy, well worth the calories. It’s like ice cream’s more wholesome sister.

The Baby Girl had chocolate, of course, in a waffle cone generously encrusted with Oreo cookies. I had never had frozen custard before, but I’ll be back. The special flavor on Thursday is Bailey’s Irish Crème and on Saturday, caramel cashew. Can you imagine?

They also have “concretes,” an improbable name for those flurry-like things at the DQ, I think it is. Ravae promises that theirs ($3.39 and $4.09) are better and flavors run from raspberry to cappuccino to cake batter and Butterfinger.

Anyway, if you need an ice cream fix, I say give this frozen custard a try. They’re open from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. Check out their website here.

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