You’ll see its strawberry sibling later on in this list, but this is a consistent ice cream bar that always delivers if you have a chocolate craving. That’s for another day:įor those of you who love really icy, syrupy stuff on a really hot day, this one is for you. Let’s break them down, and we’re obviously not counting actual soft-serve ice cream here. He wrapped up some Pesach lamb, some matzah and some bitter herbs and ate them together.Like many of you out there on the internet, I mourned the loss of the Choco Taco when it was announced that the incredible frozen treat was getting discontinued after nearly 40 years by its maker, Klondike.īut it also ignited a debate with some friends that I decided to bring here: Where did it rank among the ice cream novelties - that’s what they were called at one camp I attended, which I’ve stuck to since - that you can get from an ice cream truck? As we read in the Passover Haggadah, “This is what Hillel did, at the time that the Temple stood. This approach to life dates all the way back to Rabbi Hillel. As Drazen notes, “With the Choco Taco you’re getting the ice cream, cone, nuts and chocolate with just about every bite.”Īs Jews, we know how to hold in our hands and savor multiple places, multiple times, or as Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism (whose headquarters are also in Philly) put it, multiple civilizations with every bite of Jewish life. The very shape and composition of the Choco Taco is emblematic of Jewish values. The Jewish flavor of the Choco Taco runs deeper than the religious persuasion of its inventor or distributors. Unilever then went on to buy Klondike, which became the parent company of Choco Taco until the announcement this week that it would be discontinued (thus making Unilever even more unpopular with ice cream-loving Jews, following the recent Ben & Jerry’s debacle). To manufacture Drazen’s invention, Jack & Jill partnered with Wisconsin-based distributor Gold Bond, which was later bought by Good Humor, which had been bought by Unilever. Everything bagel-flavored ice cream now exists and we don’t know what to think.But the Choco Taco has a particularly Jewish provenance. From Steve Herrell (whose wife and business partner are Jewish), to Ben & Jerry’s, Haagen Dazs to Baskin-Robbins, our country’s favorite frozen desserts were all the product of Jewish invention, ingenuity and our collective desire to sweeten life’s often challenging path. In a broader sense, one could easily make the argument that ice cream is America’s most Jewish industry. What made this an especially bittersweet moment for me is that the Choco Taco is a singularly Jewish creation. Chris Murphy of Connecticut even suggested invoking the Defense Production Act to stave off the beloved treat’s demise. Horror author Stephen King, soccer star Alex Morgan, Star Trek legend George Takei, all expressed their condolences. On social media, the outpouring of love and sadness was overwhelming. ![]() As reported (eulogized?) by The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post and NPR, the beloved ice cream novelty the Choco Taco is being discontinued, effective immediately. In a summer, in a year, in an era of seemingly endless bad news, the announcement that came this past Monday still stung.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |