Restaurants
Maple Leaf Dairy
Maple Leaf Dairy is a local favourite for ice cream in Danforth East at Dawes Road. The ice cream store is known by locals as St. Clair's and is attached to the St. Clair factory where they make the delicious, frozen treats.
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Do you remember the days when ice cream was just ice cream? This was prior to the dawn of novelty, premium and super-premium ice creams. There wasn't very much choice. For value, you could go with a 4L tub of generic chocolate, vanilla or neapolitan for $4. If you wanted a bit more flavour, you could get a 2L flavour of Parlour or Chapmans ice cream for $2.50. There were under a dozen flavours to choose from.
Maple Leaf Dairy simply reminds me of those days, but with much more variety. I didn't quite take an official count, but there appeared to be about three dozen flavours with a few sorbets at the end.
I paid $4.75 for a double scoop (cup and cone is same price). The person ahead of me in line had ordered a single scoop, though I did not initially hear what he had ordered. From what I saw, I had assumed that he ordered a double scoop. Portions here are humongous! I simply forgot to have dinner as the ice cream was essentially a meal.
I had a "scoop" of Rocky Road on the bottom, topped with a "scoop" of Swiss Mocha. The Swiss Mocha had a light coffee flavour to it, akin to a double double with swirls of mocha fudge. The Rocky Road had a rich, deep chocolate flavour. The texture of the ice cream really enhanced this flavour in particular (more on that in a bit). Don't expect huge chunks of stuff in this ice cream, the pieces inside were fairly small, however the flavour did shine through.
As the ice cream is made on site and kept at a constant temperature, the aeration was perfect. This is why store bought ice cream isn't as great as this stuff. If the ice cream is slightly warmed (during your drive home, or while it is on a skid in the store while being stocked), this will slightly melt the ice cream and remove the pockets of air inside which degrades the quality of the ice cream. Keep in mind that this is traditional ice cream and is more like an ice milk rather than an ice cream as far as texture goes, so aeration plays a vital role here.
I'm not the biggest fan of their cups and bowls as they are styrofoam. However, this likely helps to insulate the ice cream and keep it from melting as quick as it would in a coated paper cup. I must give them credit for keeping the neighbourhood clean. There are at least three garbage cans along the wall outside of the store with a sign encouraging their customers to keep the area clean and use the garbage cans. I did not see any litter.
If you want to take some home, I noticed that they also sell 4L containers for $11 and jumbo (11.4L?) containers (the same ones they scoop out of) for around $35.
Long story short, if you're not looking for gourmet ice cream, but still want high quality old fashioned ice cream with a large variety of flavours, this is the place to go!
Worth visiting if you live in the East End!
You only need to order a single scoop, if you order anything more (double/ triple ), be prepared to not eat for the rest of the day :) Caution : if its a very HOT day , eat it up quickly or you will be wearing it because they give you so much :) Try the BANANA ice cream Its my favourite and the best. I start and end the Summer with a Banana ice cream cone, its a tradition of mine.
Enjoy everyone :) And yes you can't beat the price WOW!