Clumpies Ice Cream, Chattanooga TN

This is Marie, contributing an article about a cute little place that serves ice cream that a fair number of Chattanoogans seem to think is quite tasty. We went to Chattanooga to relax and had a simple vacation day without filling in all of our spare time at new restaurants. First, we went back to Champy’s Fried Chicken, which we visited the month before. Grant wanted to try the tamales and the catfish, which he says were pretty good, but not as good as their fried chicken, which was excellent.

Then, we tracked down the Pure Sodaworks cart. On Sundays, their little shop, which faces Coolidge Park, is closed. They let us know on Facebook that they would be at the city farmer’s market. This is located next to a stadium where the local college team plays. I bought some honey from Honeyberry Farm in Knoxville, and some beni shogun apples from Mercier Orchards in Blue Ridge. We found the cart and enjoyed both their ginger ale and their apple pie sodas, which were wonderful.

Next, we treated the baby to some more time at the Creative Discovery children’s museum, where he got completely drenched. We learned a valuable lesson about visiting Creative Discovery. If you visit with a toddler who enjoys getting himself soaked from head to toe, you can enter through the gift store and avoid the water area, where bigger kids can get to play with a little more restraint than ours. This baby loves Creative Discovery – the inclusion of Fisher-Price Peek-a-Blocks is a bonus – and, once we changed him into some dry clothes, he had a good time.

The thing is, we fully intended for him to get really wet, but at Coolidge Park, and not at the museum! Since we had unaccountably resisted the urge to eat ice cream last time (the delectable cupcake from the place below probably had something to do with that) we made sure to include them in our trek this time.

Normally when I go to an ice cream place I really enjoy having two or three tastes of things before making my choice. After all, how else can one decide whether to take on a challenge such as sour cream ice cream, as I did recently at Jake’s in Atlanta, without knowing first that it’s a win? Clumpies does not actually have that particular flavor, but they have more than enough to make their menu board an ever-changing thing. The girlchild will want to visit during the holidays and get some egg nog ice cream. I would rather like to take a stab at the Valentine’s special of raspberry with chocolate bits. However, this time I particularly wanted my go-to favorite and was not in the mood to experiment – I like a good creamy chocolate ice cream drowning in strawberry topping, and although the topping remains the same, the choice of which particular chocolate variety depends on my mood. Besides, it’s a good excuse for trying all the chocolate varieties they have on display.

Lately at ice cream places I have been getting sorbets because the baby cannot have the joy of ice cream until he outgrows his regrettable dairy allergy. (Dear reader, please send good wishes that this happens soon!) There was a bittersweet moment at this particular visit while I was downing my bowl of ice cream while trying to distract the baby with snacks and toys from what he KNEW was better. The people in the table next to us had a baby too, and had given her a kiddie cone of her very own to smear cutely on her face and drip down her arm while grandparents and aunts took pictures. One of these days that will be our kid, but by that point he will likely be able to choose his own flavor. Hopefully it will be kumquat mint or something else fun and unique, but if his go-to flavor turns out to be French Silk with strawberries poured all over it, I won’t remind him that he couldn’t have any on his first visit. Because although sorbet is lovely and cool and just the thing if you are thirsty and tired, there is really no substitute for chocolate and strawberries put together and made very, very cold.

Then we went to the fountains in the park and he got all wet all over again.

You can see all the restaurants that we have visited for our blog on this map, with links back to the original blog posts. It’s terrific for anybody planning a road trip through the southeast!