September 2015 – Eating Through Roseville

We are winding down from the high temperatures finally, but you can still take advantage of that random warm day by cooling down with a tasty treat at The Parlor. This is a new spot that opened at Rocky Ridge & Eureka, right next door to Beach Hut Deli and the spot where Crush 29 (one of my very earliest posts from 2011) once lived. This seems to be their 2nd location. The original is in Sacramento on Fair Oaks.

I arrived and met some family at 5:30. They had a few customers at the time but they cleared out pretty quickly. Once we were ready to order it started to pick up though and was a slightly busy for a while. So what makes The Parlor stand out from other ice cream joints? Donuts. They take a donut sliced in half and stuff it with your choice of ice cream. They have 14 flavors of ice cream, and they are all fairly unique, you won’t find basic vanilla or chocolate on the board (although perhaps they do have it if requested, I can see that being a thing). Instead they have flavors like:

Thai Tease

(A superbly satisfying blend of milky vanilla goodness and Thai tea sweetness)

Midnight in Paris

(A delicious fusion of creamy coffee ice cream and delectable hazlenut nutella chocolate swirls)

Everything but the…
(Satisfy your sweet tooth with this amazing combination of succulent caramel, crunchy pretzel and moist fudge bits. This flavor has everything but the…)

You’re essentially done at this point….unless you want more! For just $0.50 more you can add unlimited toppings. Today they had 26 on that board including Cap’n Crunch, Potato Chips, Toffee Bits, Marshmallow Cream and Honey. For $1.00 they had fresh strawberries as well. Now, with your donut loaded up they take it back to the kitchen to warm it up and give it a dusting of powdered sugar.

I had a taste of the Thai Tease, I needed to know if it was anything like Gunther’s version. It’s pretty spot on. That said, I was feeling something else. I ended up going pretty colorful with cake batter and fruity pebbles (which seems pretty tame for this place, but I’m perfectly happy with a scoop of vanilla most of the time anyway). It was ready in just a couple of minutes and handed to me in a bag. I took it over to our table, got some napkins and a plate from a counter in the back, and got to work.

I was really impressed at how warm the donut initially was. It was wonderful and soft to bite into, not to mention delicious! The ice cream was cold through my last bite, and about halfway through it did chill the donut, but I was also kind of eating slowly and taking photos, so I’m sure that played a part. The last few bites were a little messy. The cake batter was, wow, super sweet. It might even rival ColdStone’s cake batter. the fruity pebbles added a perfect crunch and brief blast of fruit flavor to each bite.

This was a nice surprise. I loved it to the last bite. Even if you’re not into the whole donut+ice cream experience, you can certainly just get a scoop or two in a cup or cone, like my mom did. Something that we really liked was how reasonable the prices were. Places like this can quickly take their specialty items and apply specialty prices, but these felt very fair. An ice cream puff was just $4.50, a single scoop $3.25 and a double $5, and they are BIG scoops. Definitely plan on returning to The Parlor in the future.

Website: http://www.theparloricecream.squarespace.com

For lunch today I finally made it to The Green Boheme. I had tried to go there a month ago but they are inexplicably closed on Saturdays. All other days they are open from 7-9 (except on Monday when they close a little earlier at 3). They are located in an odd little spot behind Sports Page in the Century 14 center. I noticed them one day because they have a couple tables and an umbrella outside when they are open. My photo above was taken when I first tried to go, so they were closed at that time and the tables were put away.

The Green Boheme is a raw vegan cafe where you can get take out or dine in, and on Tuesday evenings they host Dine & Demo events where Chef Brooke Preston does a live demo of a featured recipe. They also have some pre-prepared snacks and drinks that you can pick up and take out as well.

I arrived at about 11:15 and was shocked to see the parking lot packed. As I walked towards the door I realized most of these people were probably over at the Sports Page for football. Out front their tables were set up, though no one was outside. Just before the front door was a little stand with some menus and a sign that said to grab one and order at the counter. Inside it was fairly quiet. There are a couple tables seated and one person working on something behind the counter. I took a moment at a table to look over the menu (the site might be out of date because the prices do not match up on what I ordered. I included a link to a scanned menu from my visit below).

I picked out the Enchilada (House made corn wrap stuffed with our ‘notcho cheeze’, marinated Portobello & avocado and topped with our ‘sour crème’ & salsa verde. Served with our jicama Mexican ‘rice’ & nut & seed ‘bean’ pate)[$15.95] and a Horchata Smoothie (Brazilnut, banana, vanilla, coconut water, cinnamon, dates, chia & sea salt)[$9.95]. I ordered up at the counter and signed for my credit card on a slickly swiveling touch screen and had my receipt emailed to me. The friendly cashier asked if I would also like some water, which I accepted. I grabbed the green bottle with a glass and took a seat.

In about 10 minutes I had my plate delivered to me. By now there was a lot more activity. 2 or three people had emerged from the back and a couple more were just arriving to work, meanwhile quite a few Seahawks fans on their way to next door meandered in to look around. Some even stayed to get a bite. One of the employees from the back brought me my smoothie, which had a nice dusting of cinnamon on top. I grabbed some utensils from a container at the center of the table and dug in.

Although it was obvious, my brain still wasn’t quite ready for the fact that everything would be cold. It took a couple of bites to get used to. The jicama Mexican rice was tasty and reminded me a lot of a couscous or quinoa summer salad. I really enjoyed the nut & seed ‘bean’ pate. It had a really smooth and pleasing texture, and something in it seemed to have a bit of heat that built up slowly. The enchilada itself was loaded with avocado and slightly less of portobello. I did not seem to notice whatever the ‘natcho cheeze’ was supposed to be, either it wasn’t there or it was overwhelmed by the other ingredients. This also had a some spice to it that creeped up on you if you weren’t paying attention. It had lots of flavors going on all at once. My horchata smoothie was very good. It leaned towards banana as the primary flavor with some cinnamon just underneath.

Overall I actually quite enjoyed this nice, light lunch. All the staff that I interacted with seemed very friendly. The one thing that would keep me from returning is the price. $16 seems way high for the plate you get. I think $9-10 would be more reasonable. The smoothie at $10 is also a bit much. I hadn’t paid too much attention to the prices when I picked out my food so I was slightly surprised at the total up at the register. I’m probably looking at this from the wrong angle. If you’re living a raw vegan type lifestyle then you surely don’t have many options for dining out, so maybe it’s totally OK to pay a little more and be able to order anything from their decently-sized menu. I can see that. For me however, it’s just not something I will be coming back to unfortunately.