Victorian gardens, inventive flavours,
homemade everything You need to visit PEI’s dessert destination BY SHELLEY CAMERON-MCCARRON
BRYE CAISSIE
B
efore we go further, you should know that I stopped caring—about everything—with my first taste of key lime pie ice cream from Holman’s Ice Cream Parlour. I forgot all about minor family squabbles, our next destination, even this dreamy summer day, and focused in on the only thing that mattered: the otherworldly perfection of this moment. Sinking into a red Adirondack chair in enchanting Victorian gardens, even the charms of this intoxicating setting momentarily disappeared for me as I focused all my attention and awareness on savouring this experience. And my new addiction. Holman’s, on Fitzroy Street in seaside Summerside, PEI’s second largest city, came as a revelation, a next-level dream. Located inside a trim, green, stately two-storey Georgian-influenced heritage home known as the Holman Homestead, the building once served as a parsonage and later as the residence of R.T. Holman, one of PEI’s most prominent merchants in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Today, visitors are greeted by the warm scent of waffle cones, a roughly 80-year-old soda fountain, and 16 inventive ice cream flavours from Holman’s rotating roster of more than 100 decadent choices. Along with scoops and scoops of ice cream, they serve milkshakes and floats and homemade waffles and desserts— even a wonderfully oddball “spaghetti” sundae comprised of vanilla ice cream, shaped as spaghetti, with strawberry sauce,
Two scoops of Holman’s ice cream in a homemade waffle cone. PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
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