Ice cream shop opens with out-of-the-ordinary flavors + A Tri-Cities favorite eatery closes
A little bit of cold weather hasn’t stopped Tri-Cities customers from trying out a unique new ice cream shop.
What’s the Scoop? opened earlier this month, and customers are already falling in love with their fun, custom flavors.
Owned by Rob and Mallory Chapin, who run the eatery Poutine, Eh just a few doors down, this new ice cream shop is full of flavors you literally can’t find anywhere else.
Rob has been working with the Walla Walla Cheese Company throughout the past year coming up with ideas for new flavors for the shop.
From caramelized onion to jalapeno cheesecake, you never know what sweet or savory new flavors they’ll have on hand. Because the ice cream is produced in small batches, once a flavor runs out, they rotate in a new one.
Some of the most popular right now are the Mexican hot chocolate, Mr. Maple, Spiced Apple Cider and Santa’s Cookie Plate, which is a cookie dough ice cream using gingerbread cookie dough.
They’ve even got some adult only flavors using beer from Moonshot Brewery.
They also make their cones in house, and have fun flavor toppings such as rose and habanero.
“They will leave wanting more, it is not your average ice cream shop,” Mallory Chapin said. “It’s an experience like no other in the Tri-Cities.”
Customers have come to love Poutine, Eh because it’s one of the few places around that regularly carries favorite snacks from Canada. Now they’re using those snack runs to help inform new flavors.
They also have some fun ways to order, that go beyond your typical bowl or cone.
We’re the only place you can find chips and dip made with ice cream and ice cream flights, with four flavors in a flight or one of each,” she said. “We also carry pints of Walla Walla Cheese Company and any ice cream in the dipping cabinet can be made into a pint.”
Fresh Out the Box
A beloved fusion restaurant closed last week.
Friday was the last day for Fresh Out the Box, which was known for its unique flavors Vietnamese fusion.
In a social media post, the owners of the restaurant said a new opportunity had come up recently and they decided to close the store rather than continue trying to juggle both.
Fresh Out the Box first launched their food truck about eight years ago, and opening their sit-down restaurant in 2017 at the Village Shopping Center on Clearwater Avenue in Kennewick.
They’re not gone for good though. The good news is that their old food truck is still on hand, and they plan on relaunching it in 2023.
Coming soon
Two new restaurants are nearing opening. 1derful Food Park and Fable Craft Bar and Kitchen recently applied for liquor licenses, signaling they’re close to opening their doors.
1derful also passed its first health inspection. The food park is a 7-kitchen, walk-up window style outdoor food court, with a large interconnected patio area, totaling about 30,000 square feet.
1derful Food Park is between McDonald’s and Sportsman’s Warehouse by the Colonade Shopping Center, near the Summer’s Hub food truck park off of Canal Drive.
Owner Joo Seok Baek will be running 1Derful Korean BBQ out of the Food Park, and has space available for six other dining options. Baek plans to serve Korean BBQ fried chicken and meat-rice bowls, as well as side dishes.
▪ Fable Craft Bar and Kitchen is the newest restaurant from the J. Bookwalter Winery portfolio. They’re taking over the old home of R.F. McDougall’s restaurant, at 1705 Columbia Park Trail in Richland.
R.F. McDougall’s opened in 1979 and was built around a historic wooden bar dating to the 1860s.
The bar was originally built in New Jersey and traveled around Cape Horn to a saloon in Fairbanks, Alaska, during the Alaskan Gold Rush. It made it back to Washington state in the mid-1970s, according to a news release from the winery.
The new Fable Craft Bar and Kitchen is part of the Bookwalter’s recent expansion, taking the name of the bar in the winery’s Fiction restaurant.
J. Bookwalter opened a 20,000-square-foot winery in late 2021 that includes expanded production and storage, a new tasting room, indoor and outdoor event areas and its company offices.
The new facility gave the company the ability to expand Fiction and its restaurant in the space that once housed production and barrel storage.
That will allow the Fiction restaurant team to expand its focus on a seasonal menu and farm-to-table offerings linked to the region’s agricultural heritage.
