The Sweet Spot: The Ice Cream Menu That Keeps Telling You to Sit Down

This is The Sweet Spot, our weekly column: one place for a sweet treat around Sarasota, every week, no repeats.

Most ice cream menus tell you what's in the scoop. The one at Great Heights Creamery tells you what to do about it.

Here's how the shop describes its Oatmeal Cookie flavor, organic brown sugar and warm cinnamon ice cream with scratch-made oatmeal cookies folded in: "You'll need to sit down for this."

That's not a description. That's a stage direction! And it is not the only one.

The menu has notes for you

Read the flavor list top to bottom and it starts to feel like the ice cream is coaching you.

The Darkness is a dark chocolate stracciatella, and the menu's warning is "So dark, you might get lost." On Halloween, that's practically a costume.

New Fashioned Vanilla, pure vanilla bean, gets one complex, nutty, exotic sentence and then a very confident "Nuff said."

PB & J, peanut butter ice cream swirled with organic grape jelly, comes with a full-on love letter: "It's good to see you again, old friend. I still love you and I don't care who knows!" I have never related to a dessert this hard.

Then there's Yes, Honey, honeycomb toffee in a honey ice cream made with raw honey from Sarasota Honey Co. The shop calls it its version of a Hokey Pokey. And Somewhere In Tuscany is an olive oil ice cream with fresh rosemary and a touch of sea salt, which sounds like a dare until you remember olive oil and salt make everything better.

Fall is in the rotating lineup too: Autumn Dreams (cinnamon-sugar apple crumble swirled into that vanilla), Drunken Pumpkin (spiced pumpkin-bourbon with candied pecans) and Sweet Potato Pie with graham cracker crumbles and honey-toasted corn flakes. Flavors rotate, so check the case when you walk in. Lots of the menu is marked gluten-free, and the vegan side includes PB & Bananas, Lime in the Coconut and a pear ginger sorbet made with cashew and coconut milk.

From a Brooklyn apartment to a garage to Boulevard of the Arts

Great Heights is Ryan and Christina Edwards, a husband-and-wife team. Per their own story, they started making ice cream as a hobby in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, testing flavors at friends' parties and family gatherings until the ice cream requests became, in their words, the norm.

In the summer of 2020 they sold their house in New York, packed up their one-year-old daughter and two-year-old puppy and moved to Florida to be closer to family. Christina has a background in design, Ryan has the craftsman skills, so they designed and built their own ice cream cart in their garage and took it to farmers markets, events and private parties. The flavors, they say, carry family traditions and their Italian heritage.

The cart grew into a scoop shop in the Rosemary District. The milk and cream come from Dakin Dairy Farms out in Myakka City, the same family farm whose cows get a fresh-cut salad twice a day. So yes, the cows ate well, and now you will too.

What I'd order

Sit down first. The menu insists.

Then get a cup with Oatmeal Cookie and Yes, Honey, and add a small scoop of Somewhere In Tuscany as the wild card. If it's Halloween night and you want to lean in, swap the wild card for The Darkness and try not to get lost.

Throwing a party? Great Heights makes custom ice cream cakes in two sizes, a 6-inch for 8 to 10 people and a 9-inch for 15 to 20, with your pick of two flavors, a thin layer of scratch-made brownie on the bottom, fresh whipped cream and sprinkles. Give them at least 48 hours' notice (order page). The cart that started it all still rolls out for weddings, corporate events and private parties, too (events page).

Go

• Where: 1371 Blvd. of the Arts, Unit 3, Sarasota, in the Rosemary District
• Hours (per the shop): noon to 9 p.m., every day
• Call: 646-285-5024
• Online: greatheightscreamery.com, Instagram @greatheightscreamery
• On Gigly: Great Heights Creamery's Gigly card
• More sugar: every local scoop shop, doughnut counter and chocolate case is on our Sweet Treats map

Next week, a new stop in The Sweet Spot. Until then, do what the menu says and take a seat!

— Marina