Summer in the Twin Cities means it's Twins, cabin and road construction season. But it’s also ice cream season, suckas! My son Murphy and I recently visited five of Twincy’s most popular ice cream shops to stuff our faces with frozen treats. Here are the lickety-split results.

Liberty Custard (5401 Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis)

Murphy and I walked into Liberty amped up to eat some of their famous frozen custard. 

“I’ll take two kid-cones please!” I said enthusiastically to the cashier. Murphy stood by my side, twitchy with treat exuberance.

“Is the other kid-cone for you?” the cashier asked grumpily. “Because only kids can eat kid-cones.” Then he paused and tilted his head. “You can’t order a kid-cone because you are not a kid.”

I stood there, dumbfounded. If there is anyone on the planet who knew that I wasn’t a kid, it was me! I not only have gray hair, but I recently just discovered that I have a few gray CHEST HAIRS. Believe me, I’m well aware of my age. But that was not the point.  There were a multitude of highly personal reasons why I ordered a kid-cone: I’m on a diet, I have Crohn’s disease and can't eat too much dairy and (sadly) it’s all I can afford.  Most of these reasons I didn’t exactly want to air publicly, especially to a 20-year-old kid with a sarcastically puckered face and an eyebrow ring. I’m sure Liberty has a good business reason as to why it wouldn’t sell kid-cones to adults. But in a real-world application, it makes no sense. This type of petty and heavy-handed authoritative B.S. gets my “Irish up” with a quickness. 

When Murphy walked away to get a glass of water, I turned to the cashier and said, “The second cone is for my other kid in the car.” (Note: I don’t have another kid).

After I paid, I stepped outside, turned around and stared at the cashier through the glass door. With fiery Irish rebellion twinkling in my eye, I stared at the cashier and gobbled down my kid-cone like a defiant member of the I.R.A. No, not that I.R.A.--the new I.R.A. (the Ice Cream Republican Army) that I just formed in the Liberty parking lot.

Izzy’s Ice Cream (2034 Marshall Avenue, Saint Paul)

Scoop for scoop, Izzy’s is the best ice cream in the Twin Cities. It is a place where business and imagination are perfectly swirled together to form the sweetest mixture in town. Murphy and I were wholeheartedly welcomed by two super-chipper college kids who gave me nothing but props for trekking all the way across town from our south Minneapolis neighborhood just for a scoop of ice cream - kid-cones, nonetheless! With solar panels on the roof powering the business, fresh patches of ice cream made right next door and a wall covered with pictures of ice cream fanatics all named Izzy (or Isabella) the place was as indie as it’s going to get. 

Murphy tore into a kid-cone of SpongeBob (sponge cake with lemon and raspberry flavoring) and an Izzy scoop (a tiny scoop on top) of Cotton Candy. I was still feeling traces of my angry Irish blood coursing through my veins from the Liberty skirmish, so at Izzy’s I naturally ordered a scoop of Irish Moxie (ice cream flavored with Jameson, chocolate and Heath bars). As we joyfully sat in the window, I asked Murphy if his was good. I got no answer. Making a squirrelly 6-year-old boy speechless is the highest praise any ice cream will receive. Well done.

Sebastian Joe's (4321 Upton Avenue South, Minneapolis)

Sometimes I find the flavor combos at Sabby Joe's to be quite suspect. They can go off the deep end by adding cayenne pepper and garlic to their ice cream, but that is all a part of their creative process. Strikes and gutters, dude. More often than not, though, Sabby Joe’s knocks it out of the park. The Murphster pounded a scoop of a flavor called Nicollet Pot Hole with a vengeance. I had a scoop of Chai Tea that was so awesome that I imagined that if you dipped a finger into the clouds in heaven it would taste just like it. 

Lake Harriet Concession Stand (Lake Harriet, Minneapolis)

Nothing beats a good old-fashioned dumbbell-size scoop of peppermint bon bon (Murphy and I tipped it over into a cup). Plus, the scenery and people watching is top notch. How awesome is it to sit and get fat while you watch others exercise?

Grand Ole Creamery (750 Grand Avenue, St. Paul)

If you need to know the reason why the Grand Ole Creamery has been in business for 22 years, just get within two blocks of the place. The sweet smell of malted homemade waffle cones leads you straight to one of the Twin Cities' not-so-secret ice cream shops. The irresistible smell of waffles wafted over Murphy and me and we found ourselves in a trance, hovering above the ground Peter Pan-style, and getting in line with the rest of St. Paul for a cone of ice cream. 

Even though while you wait in the long line outside, it feels like you’re taking a bath in butter, the payoff inside it huge. I chose a whopping S'mores ice cream and Murphy chose the Cookies and Cream. When they asked us what kind of cones we wanted, Murphy froze. He didn’t know what to say.

“We’ll take two waffle cones, please,” I said, as I exercised my inalienable right to choice my cone size and type. After all, isn’t that what summer is all about anyway?