Ben & Jerry's White Russian Ice Cream

My husband and I came to Washington DC for the weekend to visit friends in the area, and I was thrilled to find that the Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shop in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, had a TON of flavors that I haven't tasted yet. Since we are visiting over a four day weekend, we decided that we would visit the scoop shop several times so that I could properly sample multiple flavors.

On our first visit, we made friends with two very cool scoop shop employees, who were interested in my blog and were more than willing to discuss ice cream textures and flavors with me. We had a great time with them, as you can see -

As for the actual taste testing, after weighing my options, I decided to try the White Russian flavor, since it's supposedly very hard to locate. It was discontinued at one point, then revived as a scoop shop flavor, but I've found comments online indicating that many people think that it's still unavailable because they haven't been able to find it. So I thought it would be better to try this flavor while it's within my power to do so.

For all the hype, though, White Russian didn't turn out to be all that exciting. It's a coffee flavored ice cream with a coffee liqueur. That sounds pretty tasty, but the flavor turned out to be extremely similar to that of plain old Coffee ice cream. So similar, in fact, that my new friends at the Alexandria Ben & Jerry's tell me that most people can't tell the difference at all. I noticed one major difference, though - a grittier texture. The ladies behind the counter tell me that this gritty texture has something to do with the liqueur. I didn't think it was a positive addition to the flavor, honestly. Especially because I had just recently sampled Coffee Caramel Buzz, which has amazingly delicious Whiskey Caramel Swirls, I am aware that yummy alcoholic flavor can be added to ice cream with much better results. Therefore, White Russian gets a 2 star rating... but the Old Town Alexandria Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shop gets a 5 star rating.