Now That’s A Banana Split

While visiting my home town of Fairmont, WV last week, Bev and I went to dinner with a childhood classmate (Nancy) and her husband (Jim), seeing her for the first time in 47 years.  I asked her to select the restaurant and she chose Oliverio's, our favorite Italian place in the area, but I failed to take my camera – I believe we all thought our meals were very good.

When the meal was over, I wasn’t quite done visiting and asked if there was somewhere we could go for a cup of coffee or something and Jim suggested the Pokey Dot Restaurant – an old hangout from his Fairmont days.  Since it was pretty busy, I hated to take up a table just for coffee so I began looking at the dessert menu, as did Jim and Nancy.

As it turns out, Jim is a big fan of Ice cream and after reading the description for the “Humongous Banana Split” which starts out with “Mounds of delicious vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream….", he opted for one.  I was sitting such that I could see the girl making it and I watched her dip out several scoops of ice cream then form them into a softball sized ball – repeating for each flavor.  After getting one ball of each flavor – which was already a lot of ice cream – back down into the freezer she went to form more balls.

At this point I told Jim I thought he was about to get more than he bargained for and he went to ask if it was his - and it was.  When they brought it, it had nine 1# balls of ice cream with the usual assortment of toppings.  It was so big, the entire restaurant was smiling and one lady even crossed the room to ask if she take a picture of it.

Trust me, my shot doesn’t do it justice, but if you just imagine each scoop is the size of a softball or look at the standard sized banana split dish peaking out from under the chocolate, you’ll get the idea, and mounds of ice cream doesn’t begin to describe this beast.  And the most amazing part was that it carried the unbelievably low price of $7.99.  Talk about a great value, I checked in Walmart and nine pounds of the cheapest ice cream at costs about $9. 

Jim ended up boxing the top two tiers and eating about half the lower one before giving up.  I told him that seeing this creation and the look on his face was worth the 450 mile drive to WV regardless of how tomorrow's reunion went (more later on this).

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

One year ago:  Eggplant Parmesan

Two years ago: Blueberries, Maters, & Mayo

Larry

7/13/12 event date