Summer treats - Carmen's Best Ice Cream

It's still quite hot these days so despite it being the month of June, summer seems to be pretty much in effect. Summer brings along with it a fondness for cold refreshments such as halu-halo, fruit shakes, and ice cream. And so these are still "uso" or in season. I personally like ice cream more than the other delights of summer with the exception of fresh fruits (nothing beats mangoes, kaimito, atis, etc.). And it's a good things there's a lot of ice cream brands and flavours to choose from. It helps that there are also many ice cream/gelato shops around including Bar Dolci and Gelatissimo, which serve some of the best ice cream. There are also the artisan brands of which I have so far only tasted Sebastian's and, recently, Carmen's Best.

I saw a sign stating a coffee shop was selling Tablea chocolate cakes as I was driving along Marcos Highway in Antipolo City, and was curious enough to check it out the next time I was driving through the area (which was quite regular because it was along my commute). As I parked my car in front of the shop though, I noticed another sign saying they sold Carmen's Best ice cream. The wife told me about this some time ago though I don't remember her saying she has tasted it. Likely, someone told her that it was good artisan ice cream. I ended up getting a couple of pints of different flavours so we could finally taste the product.

I first heard about Carmen's Best from the wife and saw one sign along Katipunan Road in White Plains that indicated the ice cream being sold via a pre-school in the area.

A pint sold for 395 PhP, which I thought was priced as much as or higher the Haagen Dazs. I think this was fair for artisanal ice cream like Carmen's Best.

We like Carmen's Best's salted caramel ice cream. It's creamy and the taste is distinct from similar flavours coming out of the big companies like Nestle and Selecta. We also sampled their Butter Pecan ice cream. We thought it was okay but then it seemed to be overloaded with pecans so it was more like pecans with ice cream than ice cream with pecans. For us, the jury is still out there and we have yet to try their other flavours to check the consistency of the quality. Years back, I could say that Sebastian's, when they still had that stand in SM City North EDSA, was quite consistent with the quality of their ice cream. Hopefully, Carmen's Best is at par or better. I'm not yet sure about value for money though as I have had a lot of Haagen Dazs, Ben & Jerry's and Baskin Robbins before and elsewhere, these are cheaper compared to this.

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