OGDEN — Farr Better Ice Cream has been a landmark in Ogden for decades.
The company’s original roots are in the ice industry in the late 1800s, but when refrigerators made ice harvesters and ice producers obsolete, Farr Better Ice switched gears. It became Farr Better Ice Cream in 1929, according to its website, when it started the first commercial ice cream manufacturing operation in Utah and began selling ice cream in a shop connected to its plant in Ogden.
“Since the 1920s, Farr’s original ice cream scoop shop in downtown Ogden has been something special,” the website states, and it’s true. You would be hard-pressed to find an ice cream store with more charm than Farr Better Ice Cream.
We gave Farr Better Ice Cream a 3 out of 4 scoops.
The mint green main shop is homey and full of nostalgia, with much of its signage appearing to be from decades gone by, and was crowded with customers the day I went in. Connected to the shop through a door and up a few stairs, however, is an additional ice cream counter that is obviously recently built but designed to maintain the traditional ’50s ice cream parlor atmosphere. The secondary area alleviates some of the busyness of the main shop, provides additional seating and creates a comfortable experience for customers.
Both counters offer the same products, including more than 40 different ice cream flavors from cherry chocolate chip to root beer to spumoni to licorice. The employee who assisted me said with so many flavors, it is hard to say which is most popular, but he recently had seen a lot of people order the chocolate peanut butter, so I ordered a scoop of that and a scoop of raspberry cheesecake.
The raspberry cheesecake was enjoyable enough, especially any spoonfuls with large ripples of raspberry. But it was sweeter than expected and didn’t have the tartness one would expect from something that is cheesecake flavored.
But the chocolate peanut butter is the stuff dreams are made of, which is saying something because I don’t generally gravitate toward desserts with peanut butter and chocolate. The chocolate ice cream base was perfectly sweet, smooth and creamy, and each bite had plenty of melt-in-your-mouth peanut butter slivers.
The portions were generous for the price, and the service was quick considering the number of customers at the shop that day. Although the raspberry cheesecake didn’t quite live up to expectations, the experience as a whole was satisfying, and the chocolate peanut butter ice cream and the inviting setting left me wishing I had more time to spend — and ice cream to eat — at Farr Better Ice Cream.
Location: 274 21st St., Ogden
How much: $2.79 for a single scoop, $4.19 for a double scoop
Scoop score: 3 out of 4 scoops