Rita’s is the little ice cream shop that kept our marriage sane for a week with my family. We were visiting family for my brother’s wedding. While it’s not a complete food desert, for someone who’s a foodie & Asian, it’s not great. Before the trip we made a round through the local Asian restaurants in Seattle, expecting a lot of fast food & casual chains for 10 days, and generally not much that really stood out.

Rita’s was the shining bright spot on our trip when it came to food. Iris loved it. Rita’s is a frozen custard & Italian ice shop. It’s a chain that’s scattered around various parts of the country, but generally doesn’t seem to be in touristy areas. There are a few shops in Las Vegas, for example, but none are near the strip. Next time we’re in town, we plan to go out of our way for it.

Over the course of a little over a week, I think we made at least 3 trips. We worked our way through chocolate custard, mango gelati, Misto, Italian Ice and frozen lemonade. None disappointed. Custard contains egg and is a bit thicker than ice cream, but if you didn’t tell your kids they wouldn’t notice the difference. The flavor was excellent though. It doesn’t actually taste “eggy”. The chocolate is rich without being overpowering. The mango gelati tasted like mango, even if it was probably made from mango syrup. The frozen lemonade was clearly made from real lemons. It tasted great, but I feel like I need to have some sort of critique about something so here goes: they might have done better at straining the lemon seeds.The Italian ice seemed a bit finer than a typical Hawaiian shaved ice giving it a nice texture (if you’re ever in Hawaii, though do try Matsumoto’s). It’ll still give you brain freeze if you go too fast though. Take it slow an enjoy it. 🙂

So a shout out to Rita’s. Iris loved it, and I appreciated the fact that we found food for Iris to look forward to, even if it was just dessert.

Rita’s Italian Ice
http://www.ritasice.com

– Ben