Tom’s Ice Cream Bowl

Zanesville has become my adopted hometown. I’ve spent a lot of time there in the past couple of years, as it’s where my beau grew up. In addition to Zane Grey and the Y-Bridge, Zanesville is home to an ice cream mecca that quashes all others: Tom’s Ice Cream Bowl. Since 1948, it has served delightfully cavernous bowls of my favorite dessert. Last weekend I visited Tom's for the first time as a special pre-birthday treat. Tom’s has everything you’d expect from an award-winning old-timey ice cream parlor: a long skinny counter with swiveling stools, bowtie-clad attendees, and a jukebox filled with Frank Sinatra. It’s a very happy place. After ten solid minutes of deliberation, I ordered a double dip sundae with one scoop of chocolate, one of vanilla, and butterscotch topping. Put simply, it was fanfreakingperfitastical. The vanilla tasted like vanilla, the chocolate tasted like chocolate, and the butterscotch was a melty sugar love blanket. In an increasingly fancy frozen concoction world of triple-churned gelato with lavender-infused cardamom seeds, Tom’s has stayed true to what ice cream is supposed to be.