Polly Ann Ice Cream Company has a small shop in San Francisco, well known for the there large variety of exotic flavors. I discovered their products in a grocery store, the subject of a previous post. They may well be the most-reviewed ice cream shop on earth, and so it was a little surprising to find the shop empty this past Saturday at 11:30 in the morning. No matter, I hate to have to select an ice cream flavor under crowd pressure. I picked hawthorn.

My choice was based upon there being red fruits depicted on the sign, and my vague recollection that a hawthorn was a tree of some sort. Also, I figured the odds of sampling hawthorn ice cream elsewhere were probably slim. It was a good choice. The flavor was dominated by the cream in the ice cream, but the fruit was distinct and not quite like anything can recall. It was like a cross between apple and a tropical fruit blend. the ice cream was a little crystalline. it’s probably not the best seller … “Mommy, mommy, I want hawthorn!” is hard to imagine … but more about hawthorn in a minute.

Polly Ann’s is in a residential neighborhood called the Sunset District, near the Pacific Ocean. There is a distant ocean view from the front of the shop.

It was too brisk for ice cream to be in high demand, but I liked the location. There is a geomancy shop on the block; geomancy is the Oriental art of correctly aligning and locating your house for good luck. The ice cream shop appears to share the kitchen with a snack shop next door. You can order noodles or kim chee with your ice cream, and at bargain prices.

The shop rotates through about 500 flavors, with about 48 available at any one time. They feature a wheel with 44 numbers and four “free” tabs, for the adventurous. I didn’t want to take the chance of coming up with vanilla. On my visit there was a 49th flavor, durian. Durian is the tropical fruit that smells like a natural gas leak, but has fans who claim that the flavor is delicious once you get past that. I wasn’t feeling quite that adventurous either. Hawthorn was about right.

I asked if they had a list of all the flavors. The girl said I could look at their list, but that they didn’t have one to take away. That’s fair, I photographed the page for intense contemplation later. She thought the list might be on their website … but it turns out they don’t have a website. Although it may be controversial, I think it is still okay for an ice cream shop not to have a web site.

They have many exotic flavors, and I do intend to return to try the durian. Nonetheless, most flavors are not weird. Many are combinations of familiar flavors.

Back home, I searched the web for hawthorn lore. Hawthorn powder is imported from China as a health food supplement. The whole berries are also available as health food. It’s supposed to be good for either high or low blood pressure. That’s not a good sign in terms of tasting good, because we all know that the most potent stuff tastes worst. I also found an expensive ($40 for eight ounces) health syrup. Things were looking up when I found hawthorn jelly made in Scotland, even though it doesn’t seem to be imported into the U.S. They recommend it with game.

There are a number of recipes for hawthorn jelly on the web, with the comments that it is like crab apple. The haws are apparently about as juicy as plywood, so it takes a lot of them to make jelly.

Being like crab apple is a very good sign, because crab apple jelly is among the best, in my recollection. Still, to make it yourself, you need a bushy hawthorn tree fresh with haws. Yes, haws. They seem to be like crab apples. Having no haws, I need store bought. There is hope. From Georgia, Wild Pantry offers hawthorn jelly whenever they have it in stock.

I noticed that the picture of hawthorn on the Wild Pantry site shows small round yellow fruit, whereas the health food whole berries are pictured as bright red. The Polly Ann sign also showed red berries. Are there two kinds of hawthorn?

Wild Pantry also has jelly made from Kudzu blossoms and cranberry-like autumn olives. Those could be future ice cream flavors.