When my family moved to Bedford, Texas, an old-growth suburb between Dallas and Fort Worth, this first thing I noticed about my new school is that it was built right next door to a Dairy Queen. On special occasions, classes would line up for a less-than-organized mini-field-trip for Dilly Bars, dipped cones, and of course, Blizzards. In car-crazy suburbia, it was the only destination deemed walkable from my house, and many a summer night ended in a slow-moving trip to DQ.
Of course, Dairy Queen isn't really made for cities, but serves as rather a small town institution in Texas, as Michael A. Clark explores in The Atlantic this week:
"For residents, the Dairy Queen is at once a restaurant, meet up spot, and place to pass the time. For travelers, the Dairy Queen is an oasis; it's what transforms a blur of buildings into a real, memorable place. As a native of the relatively large (population 212,169) city of Lubbock, which is six hours from everywhere, I've always appreciated rural Dairy Queens. At home, my family never goes to a Dairy Queen. On the road, though, we sometimes start planning our orders hours in advance. And yet I've never known how Dairy Queen came to be the small town restaurant of Texas."
While there is nary a decent DQ within driving distance of the inner loop (yes, I have been to the one on Antoine, no, I won't be going back), there are at least five along the relative emptiness of I-45 between Houston and Dallas. Centerville's — which has a small, gated space of grass for my dog — has become my standard mid-drive stop.
When the Bedford Dairy Queen shut down, it made the local news as one of the last in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. My friends dubbed it "Childhood: Ripped at the Seams." What other fast food joint trades in cream gravy? (To dip not only chicken strips but also the fries.) When it comes to the glory of a Blizzard, no other impostor ice cream/candy mix named after inclement weather will do. As Clark notes:
"The Blizzard has been good for Dairy Queen, but neither it nor Dairy Queen itself would exist without soft serve ice cream. After all, Sherb Noble opened the first store in Joliet, Illinois, only to sell the soft serve his friends, J.F. "Grandpa" McCullough and his son, Alex, had invented. Today, of course, soft serve is not so glamorous or novel as it was when it first debuted. Having now considered it in detail, however, I think I should offer some praise for soft serve ice cream....
"Furthermore, because soft serve doesn't freeze your mouth, it tastes better than hard ice cream. That was Grandpa McCullough's theory, anyway, and Dairy Queen boosters have treated it as gospel ever since. I haven't done a taste comparison, but I did tackle a monstrous Brown Derby (chocolate dip cone) in Aspermont (population 1,021). In size and shape, it recalled a Dr. Seuss mountain. Tens of millions of Whos could have lived on top; even with the help of my mom and dog, I couldn't finish it. Though I can't say how soft serve compares to other ice creams I've had, I will say that it was delicious—and that the structure itself was a modern-day miracle."
In a gastronomic world of vast technological advancements, the simple miracle of watching a Blizzard turned upside-down is still hard to beat.
A vintage picture of chefs EJ Miller and Ryan Lachaine. Photo by