Steve's - Southern Banana Pudding

Southern Banana Pudding - Honey-coated vanilla wafers in fresh banana ice cream with a swirl of banana cream pudding

Trying a new brand for this week's review.  Steve's!  From the bare-bones simple packaging, this appears at first glance to be a newcomer do-it-yourself brand but it is actually a premium brand ($7.99/pint) with a long corporate history.  Steve's is named after Steve Harrell who opened an ice cream shop in Somerville, Massachusetts (just north of Boston) back in 1973.  Steve pioneered the use of mix-ins in ice cream shops.  The the famous Amy's ice cream shop in Austin, Texas was started by one of his former employees.  So successful was his ice cream shop that Steve was able to sell out to a local restaurant chain in 1977.  The restaurant chain experimented with franchising and pre-packaged pints with some success at first but it discontinued the Steve's brand in the early 1990s.  In 2009, the Steve's brand was reacquired in David Stein -- one Steve's original employees in Somerville from the 1970s -- who opened up shops in Brooklyn & Manhattan and also made pints available in grocery stores.  Some of the flavors and flavor combinations look pretty interesting so I thought I'd give it a try.

This particular flavor is called Southern Banana Pudding.  I picked it to start because I've always been a fan of banana cream pie.  After opening the pint and removing the foil wrapper between the lid and the ice cream, I see the off-white color of the banana base with a hint of the banana cream swirl evident.  Also, it has sort of a unique look to the top of the pint as the ice cream appears to have pushed up a bit and also separated from the side of the plastic pail. (see photo).  Digging into the pint, the banana flavor is very strong.  Quite good, but very strong.  The base ice cream has a thick and pasty texture.  I'm not sure if that's the work of the banana cream swirl or if Steve's mixing their base ice creams this way.  The vanilla wafer bits become common as I dug further down.  They were quite good -- its often good for a flavor based on a pie filling to be offset by a bready mix-in to simulate the presence of a pie crust.  I did not taste any honey-coating on the wafers but the wafers still tasted quite good.  A couple of quibbles as I got to the bottom of the pint.  First, the ice cream got a bit runny as it melted.  Instead of a soft melted cream at the bottom, it was more like ice cream floating in milk.  Second, the very strong banana flavor got overwhelming at the end of the pint.  This might not be one to eat all in one sitting.  It is probably a flavor best split in half and shared with a friend.

Quibbles aside, I still enjoyed the pint.  Steve's a few other interesting flavors which I'll probably give a try in the coming months.