Love Boat Ice Cream
{ www.loveboaticecream.com }
A lthough not as elusive as the famed Junonia shell, finding confection perfection that is true, real ice cream isn’t necessarily an easy task. Every fast food chain and evenmany convenience stores offer up lesser, inferior versions of the original. Others have opted to switch out ingredients and proffer knock-offs by the names of custard and frozen yogurt. And of course, every grocery store’s freezer section is loaded with mass produced cartons of stuff that varies greatly in quality, texture and taste. That’s why we set out to find Southwest Florida’s perfect ice cream as we defined it: fresh, hand-made with only the finest ingredients, created with passion by the brand’s founders, or those carrying on the founding tradition, with a legacy of at least 10 years of tasty success. Of those who met our criteria for greatness, we present three Southwest Florida ice cream artisans (alphabetically) who answered our challenge. Dig in!
ALL ABOARD THE LOVE BOAT Founded in 1967, Love Boat is the oldie but goodie ice cream in Southwest Florida. Today, Love Boat scoops out of three locations: two within a mile of each other on San Carlos Boulevard in Fort Myers (the original is open seasonally), with a third on Sanibel Island. Brian Borst is the seventh and, he jokes, final owner of Love Boat, having purchased the company in 2014. As his sister and store manager Jenny Borst explains, Love Boat is as much a destination for locals and visitors as it is an ice cream lover’s treasure, with more than 70 homemade flavors from which to choose. “We sometimes have pretty long lines of customers here,” she notes, “but that’s part of our experience and something we’ve found most people truly enjoy. Standing in line, guests talk to each other, share their vacation or ice cream stories and meet people really from all over the world. It’s something of our signature.”
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