Cedar Hill Dairy Joy – Weston MA

When the noontime news gets extended by an hour to cover tornadoes that touched down in New Hampshire, you know it’s not the best day for ice cream. I spied a location I’d never been to before, but couldn’t find parking close enough to ignore the fact that my umbrella is MIA. The best option on a day like this was to go soft and I scored a Javaberry cone.

When you look at the menu board at this place, it quickly reminds you that despite the font and look of this place, that you are in Weston and it’s not the 1950s. Sure the font and design seems as though it’s from a bygone era, but then you see the numbers that are next to the items and stare blankly into your wallet. If I’m going to pay $20 for a lobster roll, I had better see the traps being pulled up from the ocean.

Thankfully, it’s not the dinner options that we’re concerned about. As an ice cream shop, this is the epitome of an old-style soft serve place. With picnic benches on either side and some of them thankfully covered by an awning on this dreary day, Dairy Joy does feel like a trip back in time. And maybe my feelings about the pricing schemes were a universal complaint because in the time I sat there there were lots of cones made, but the two employees working the food side never wavered from their game of rummy.

While most places do a chocolate and vanilla twist and then sometimes default to whatever else is in their machines at the moment, Dairy Joy has actually made an art of their combinations. They offer a creamsicle cone, and what I went for: the javaberry. It’s a swirl of coffee ice cream and black raspberry sherbet. Three of the next four customers all ordered a javaberry cone as well.

While there are some textural collisions since the two components are kept at different temperatures, the collision of flavor between these two is far more than a happy accident. I’m not a coffee drinker so it’s tough to give this worthy descriptors, but it’s a nice smooth coffee flavor without an overburdened aftertaste, and the sherbet brings in a secondary flavor that offers a complementary counterpoint. They both retain their own qualities while supporting the other. This is great soft serve ice cream.

This place seems like it is a whole universe away, whether it be the vintage aspects or the Weston pricing scheme. In reality it’s just a couple miles from Waltham’s highlights. If you head west from here, you’re not far from the DeCordova Museum or Concord. If you’re not out for making a day trip out of it, this has got a parking lot made for those that come here as a destination. Just make sure you get here before their early close.

Cone – small $2.80 medium $3.75 large $5.37

Sundae – pixie $3.65 small $4.76 large $5.71

Frappe $4.62 extra thick $5.24 (add malt +$.50)

Cedar Hill Dairy Joy

331 North Ave, 117, Weston, MA 02493

(781) 894-7144

Open seasonally

Hours 11a-8p

Dairy Joy online