Dairy Queen

...were just standing outside the Dairy Queen."

Monica: "Probably waiting for it to open."

- The One With Chandler In A Box


This episode of Friends was perhaps responsible for introducing the two beautiful words 'Dairy Queen' into my head, but it wasn't for many years after that that I finally realised what DQ was and noted, with some sadness, that I had been living my life until ...
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While Dairy Queens I have seen have been both Food Court booths and stand alone shops, I have yet to see a restaurant one. The one in Playa del Carmen (on 5th Avenue) has a couple of seats inside, and a couple of tables outside, but most food was served to go. Similarly, the one I went to in Niagara Falls was a shop front, but had no seating at all. This is perhaps largely due to the nature of the products they sell: ice creams and ... more

Dr Timothy Burke: "I remember the last time I saw you. It was the morning I left for college. You were just standing outside the Dairy Queen."

Monica: "Probably waiting for it to open."

- The One With Chandler In A Box

This episode of Friends was perhaps responsible for introducing the two beautiful words 'Dairy Queen' into my head, but it wasn't for many years after that that I finally realised what DQ was and noted, with some sadness, that I had been living my life until that point without it.

Dairy Queen is an American franchise founded during the second world war that now has branches around the world, and I have had the joyful experience of sampling their products from Mexico to Malaysia, via the USA and Canada. At present they do not have an UK branches, but their website, if it is to be believed, hints to these opening at an as yet undetermined time in the future. Still, with nearly 6000 DQs in 22 countries, you're likely to come across one on your travels.

While Dairy Queens I have seen have been both Food Court booths and stand alone shops, I have yet to see a restaurant one. The one in Playa del Carmen (on 5th Avenue) has a couple of seats inside, and a couple of tables outside, but most food was served to go. Similarly, the one I went to in Niagara Falls was a shop front, but had no seating at all. This is perhaps largely due to the nature of the products they sell: ice creams and drinks, which can you can easily eat while walking. You pay first in DQ and then they make up your item, I think because since virtually everything is made fresh while you wait they don't want you to change your mind half way through the concocting process.

It's no secret that I have a sweet tooth, and as such any ice cream chain that's even half decent will regularly get my custom. DQ is better than that, and therefore has had quite a few pesos and dollars out of me over the last year. While the menus vary from country to country, they invariably include the following highlights:

DQ BLIZZARDS are a version of a Mc Flurry, or a Burger King Blast. They take whippy, vanilla ice cream and combine it with various mix ins to create a thick, creamy ice cream treat. So thick, in fact, that they serve it to you upside down - and if they don't, it's free. This is something of a gimmick, but it must be well and truly drilled into staff in training as they've never failed to do this on the many occasions I've ordered one of these at DQs across the globe. While you cannot customise the ingredients they mix in (as you can at the pricier Cold Stone and Cold Rock franchises) there is a good standard menu, and a constantly changing Blizzard of The Month too. My favourite was the Oreo Cheesecake Blizzard I got in Canada, but I've also tried their plain Oreo ones, the M&Ms, Cookie Dough and so on. Blizzards don't tend to include sauces as Mc Flurrys do, but they are a bit more generous with the ingredients, and they have a special mixer-uper machine which ensures the mix ins are well and truly mixed in, which again McDonalds can be a bit lax on. Blizzards come in various sizes (though so do McFlurrys, in the USA) but I have always found the small to be more than big enough, and that's saying something. Supersize it only if you also want to supersize your pants over the next few months - a large Oreo Blizzard has a whopping 980 calories. Next time you hear that 'genetic predisposition' argument when it comes to obesity consider this: maybe she's born with it? Ha, maybe it's Dairy Queen.

An OREO BROWNIE EARTHQUAKE was the first thing I got from DQ in Mexico, on my second day in the country - it would have been the first but I came across the branch moments after I'd just bought an ice cream from elsewhere, so I had to wait. It was tough - I'm not good at delayed gratification, especially where ice cream is concerned. But, it was well worth it. An Eathquake takes two chocolate brownies, a veritable mound of whippy vanilla ice cream, a pool of hot fudge sauce and covers it with a generous shaking of crushed Oreos. It's a meal in itself and absolutely delicious every time - no half-defrosted or day old stale brownies here.

Another favourite of mine is the TRIPLE CHOCOLATE PARFAIT which takes a simple whippy vanilla ice cream base and drenches it in hot fudge before obliterating it with various chewy chocolaty treats including chocolate brownie bites and dark chocolate chunks. It's not massive like the Blasts, but is super sweet, though nothing a true chocoholic such as myself can't handle.

Some of the products are more standard ice cream treats. A DILLY BAR is basically a choc ice, though served on a stick and shaped like a wheel, and with smoother ice cream on the inside. Their take on a BANANA SPLIT includes dollops of chocolate, strawberry and pineapple sauce along with the usual banana / ice cream combo. You can get SUNDAES in either a plastic pot or a waffle cone, with your choice of sauce and topping - simple, but good.

You might have noticed a theme to all these items - a whippy vanilla ice cream base. One thing perhaps surprising about a chain such as DQ is that they only offer up one flavour of ice cream. However while you might think that quite limiting, the infinite number of mix ins and combinations make every item different, and I don't find DQ any more repetitive than your standard ice cream parlour (plus, what's wrong with repetition, anyway, when it comes to ice cream treats?)

In addition to ice cream, depending on the country you can also buy Slush-Puppy style drinks and cream topped Lattes, and savoury items too though these have never appealed to me. If I ate burgers and fries or chicken wraps or hot dogs, I'm not sure I'd choose to get them from what is essentially an ice cream place - I just can't imagine they'd be anything special since it's not what they specialise in. I have, however, always wanted to try one of their fancy looking ice cream cakes, but alas these are rather large and therefore require a freezer to keep them in, which I've never had access to on my travels or while living in a DQ-franchised country.

DQ is well priced in the fast food market in most countries, with items ranging from a couple of dollars for the basic cones to a few dollars for the smaller Blizzards. In Mexico, however, things came at a higher price, though the fact that I was willing to pay 40 pesos or more for a DQ ice cream when a local parlour would have charged me less than half that says something about how much I will vouch for their products. The serving sizes are decent, but I still tended to see a trip to DQ as a bit of a treat rather than a place for every day ice cream munching.

While DQ is never going to be the healthiest of options, they do have a very helpful nutritional calculator on their website, if you're planning a trip, you can have a look beforehand and decide how much you want to indulge.

Dairy Queen operate in a very specific niche market, but as such they do it well. Unlike in other fast food chains whose menus concentrate more on savoury items with ice creams as a bit of an after thought, I have never had any issues with the quality of products in a DQ. They are consistently good, regardless of where you are in the world. The only issue I ever had with them was in the Mexico branch at a mall near my home, where they took my order for something and then realised they didn't have all the ingredients. However they let me substitute Oreo pieces for chocolate sprinkles, so it was no hardship.

You go to Dairy Queen for one purpose - to buy something to eat or drink - and it's not somewhere you will tend to linger, so in that respect the branches are more like shops than cafes. For this reason there's nothing much to say about the ambience of the place, other than the walk in branches I've frequented have always been nice and clean, though there's no reason why they wouldn't be since people don't stay around long enough to make a mess. I'm always impressed, however, by how tidy their working areas are. There are rarely spilt ingredients near the dispensers, and I've never once had a product 'contaminated' by overspill from another item - there's nothing I hate more than places that give you your requested flavour or topping and carelessly throw in the remains of the last customer's order at the same time. Because all ice cream comes from a machine (and is only Vanilla anyway) there's no chance of this happening with that here, and the care and/or experience with which they combine your mix ins or toppings also means you don't get nuts if you've ordered sprinkles, or vice versa.

The turnover in Dairy Queens is quite high as they're popular places. While the downside is that you may occasionally have to wait to be served, the positive is that the ingredients are always fresh - this is not a place where you'll find dried up, thickened sauce, or soft waffle cones as they simply don't hang around long enough for the quality to deteriorate. Ditto those aforementioned brownies.

I would highly recommend Dairy Queen to those with a sweet tooth, as they offer - as their motto goes - something different. I'm already thinking about the DQ they have in Dubai, which I'll be frequenting over Christmas. It simply is that good, and on sunny days like today I really wish they'd stop dithering and open up in the UK.

http://www.dairyqueen.com/us-en/

 

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