Talking recent hiking adventures around the area as well as an interview with Randy Fenton from Main Street Ice Cream in Hamburg, NY. We talk their beginnings as a commercial landlord to now being a keystone of the WNY ice cream trail.
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This week I'm catching up on my adventures throughout western New York and thank goodness for keeping notes because sometimes it's good just to be busy. And we're placing our first pin into our ice cream trail as we sit down with Randy Fenton from Main Street Ice Cream in Hamburg as we cover their history from commercial landlord to cookies and cream and lemon ice. Episode 6 of the Buffalo Brews podcast starts now.
Welcome everyone. It's Brews Day Tuesday and you know what that means. I'm Jason Ettinger, your host, not only your host, but your producer, editor, key grip, caterer, etc, etc, etc.
We're here for a new week of the Buffalo Brews podcast. Thanks for joining us this week just like you do each and every week. And I don't want to waste any time because we have a lot on the docket here including a great interview that's coming up in a few moments.
But I am recording this opening on Sunday and I'm enjoying a Basil Hayden's Kentucky Straight bourbon whiskey. It's an 80 proof that is made in Claremont, Kentucky. The mash bill consists of a 63% corn with a 27% rye, which is a little higher rye content than most bourbons, and a 10% malted barley.
Now on the initial taste, I pick up a, it's a very light body, but it is definitely rye heavy. Rye in a bourbon is not a distinct flavor unless you're specifically dealing with a rye whiskey. But because this has a 63% corn content, which is a higher, actually it's a typical corn content that most bourbons have, you get a little bit of that sweetness on the front side.
This one has a more of a buttery texture to it and the color on it is a golden brown as opposed to other bourbons that have a darker color note to it. The aroma, definitely a charred oak that I pick up when I smell that for the first time. And then when I'm tasting it, I also pick up those typical vanilla and caramel notes that you get with your Kentucky bourbons.
So that flavor is going to give you that charred oak as well. You're going to get the brown sugar combined with that corn sweetness. And then you get a little hint of what I'm picking up might be like a black pepper that's included in that.
And I quite enjoyed this. I was looking on the website and it shows that it is a 2020 World Spirits Competition winner out of San Francisco, as well as a got a score of 95 at the 2020 New York International Spirits Competition and was a gold winner. So this one is also a winner with me.
Now the Basil Hadens is originally crafted in 1992 by Booker Noe. And Booker Noe was known for being a true innovator and one who sought to welcome new people into the whiskey world. So the style is inspired by a 1972 whiskey pioneer, Meredith Basil Haden Sr., who was a rye farmer from Maryland who moved to Kentucky to start distilling.
Not a lot of background on this particular distillery, but you've got two awards from 2020 and a definite winner in my book. So over the past few weeks, I've definitely been getting the hiking miles in, taking advantage of the decent weather. It's been still wet because we're in the springtime, so some hikes are better than others.
And some of the hikes we've done in rainy weather and some in cold or drizzly weather. But we're getting in the miles so that we can eat the Timbits and enjoy the beers in the parking lot. Some of the catching up of my adventures go back to several weeks ago when I ventured out to Bennington on a Saturday to take in the Finger Lakes trails.
And about seven miles that I did that particular day. And I've noted to a few people that the fourth mile I considered to be a nightmare. It was a very sloggy grudge that went downhill almost a mile, but it went between two, it literally went through the middle of a, it can only be described like a ravine, but it didn't have a water flow.
But there was enough water that collected in there. It was like wading through ankle-deep muck for about a mile. So it was a kind of a nightmarish portion to that hike that I wasn't particularly fond of.
And to try to stay on point with getting the miles logged correctly for the Finger Lakes 50 challenge, what I ended up doing was taking a unblazed route that was on the map. That unblazed route took me on a lot of roadways, but still counts toward the miles. And then I finished up the rest of the hike in the woods.
So we completed that on that particular Saturday. And then the following day, that morning, I met up with a group of fine, funny, entertaining folks that are now part of my Chemehue tribe who we decided in the rain to go through Hunter's Creek Park in East Aurora. That was another five mile jaunt that took us across Hunter's Creek twice up a very steep gas well or a gas line road.
And all through the park, we just had a fantastic time talking, laughing, and of course, you know, hiking those miles in as part of the challenge. And then afterwards, spent an hour and a half in the parking lot drinking beer and reminiscing about the time that we just had. So I look forward to more adventures with the Chemehue tribe.
We talk in a group chat almost daily, talking about whatever subject comes up. Fast forward to Reinstein Nature Preserve, and about three miles through the park there, that's a relatively flat park out in Chicahuaga, and takes you down by the water and the old residents that they had down there. Some of the oldest trees that are in that particular woods.
There was a huge fell that was there, and one of the members of the Nature Conservancy was there and actually gave permission to cross the barrier to just go around the tree. So I thought that was really cool and be able to take some pictures of that. Then the following day, going to Tift Nature Preserve in South Buffalo, that's along the Buffalo waterfront.
I would always encourage anybody that if they wanted to take in one hike during the year, it's go down, grab a map, and walk around the Tift Nature Preserve because you get everything there. You get, you know, brush, you get trees, you get tons of water, lots of birds, and once you get over the hill and back into the wooded area, you don't even know that you're that close to Route 5 and the waterfront. The temperature changes, the atmosphere changes, it's just a wonderful time to walk through there.
So then you fast forward to another week, that will be this past weekend here, and Buckhorn State Park, that's up in the north part of Grand Island. Took in a sunrise hike with my sister and her friend, and we did about five miles there out to the peninsula and back, and that was a very fun hike. Again, very flat, but just, you know, to be able to hike and talk with people and take in nature around you, you see deer, you see different birds.
Once you get out to the peninsula, there's a few islands that are out there where you see, you know, the seagulls and the terns that are out there. And then today, taking in a total of seven miles between College Lodge in Brockton, which is a joint college and state conservation property, and then the Earl Cargat Overland Trail in Casadega. Now, let's talk about that trail for a quick moment before we move on here.
It's always exhilarating to take in a new trail, to be able to see what kind of terrain there is, to be able to see how the scenery changes, what wildlife you may see as you're hiking. But with the Earl Cargat Overland Trail, you spend the first three quarters of a mile going up and up and up and up and up and up and up. Before you realize it, you've already climbed 600 feet, and your legs and your booty have definitely got quite the workout.
We went all the way back to the lean-to, back to a pond area, and that was a very enjoyable hike. Growing up, one of the overland trails in Chautauqua County ran in the forest across from my parents' old property. We used to, as kids, myself and my friends, Eric and DJ, we used to constantly hike and camp in those woods at the lean-tos.
Going to these lean-tos on this trail reminded me much of that, minus the pond that was there. It was nice to be able to stand there and just kind of take in a little bit of my childhood. What's coming up next is this coming weekend is Golden Hill State Park.
That's up along Lake Ontario. We'll be doing that this weekend, as well as taking in the Olcott Merchant Village that's up there that I mentioned a few weeks ago here on the podcast. Going to also be stopping by Blackbird Cidery to fill up the old growlers, and on the way back through, we'll be stopping at Rustic Buffalo on Shawnee Road in North Tonawanda for their grand opening.
It's a store that's a lot like the Totally Buffalo store, and this is in a renovated barn setting. I've been talking with John there, and I'm very much looking forward to checking out that. Then in a few weeks, I'll be heading out to Zoar Valley to take in a few hikes out there.
That'll be my first ever visit to Zoar Valley. My sister and I will be doing that over the Mother's Day weekend, and very much looking forward to that. Sorry if it seemed like I was grabbing a lot of my thoughts there, but I was kind of putting a list together in my head of all the things that I've been doing, and I know that was all hiking related, and trust more that I've been doing in recent weeks.
There's visits that I made to Platters in North Tonawanda, the cereal spot on Hurdle Avenue in Buffalo, so I'll be talking about those places in the future. For years, the Quaint Little community in Hamburg, New York has always been an attraction for entertainment, food, and good drink. This year is no exception, as we're slowly coming out of the COVID protocols.
I would encourage you as the weather starts warming up, and we have the 60s now coming up this week and next week, to take an opportunity to plan either a family night or a date night and head down to Hamburg. Anytime that you've been along that Buffalo Street, Main Street corridor, you realize that there's so much to offer there, whether it's entertainment from the Hamburg Palace Theater, if you're going to a Carte Blanche, Master's Barbecue, you might be heading for something to drink over at Alchemy, grabbing a nice wine there. Heading up to the Circle, you could go through and see Sweet Pea Bakery, Juicy Burger Bar, Comfort Zone Cafe, you can catch a coffee at there's Rain Community Kitchen there, Coyote Cafe, Grill 52, Butera's, I could go on.
But with every great night, you should end it with dessert. And if you're going to end it with dessert, you need to end up at Main Street Ice Cream, located right across from Butera's, right there on North Main Street. And I'm going to introduce you to this interview I did with Randy Fenton, who is one of the owners, along with his wife, Denise.
I have been going to Main Street Ice Cream over the past several years, whether it's by myself, or if I took my son before he had left for the Army. We always enjoyed it because they have, it's a smaller shop with Tijan Ice Cream, great people, and a great atmosphere in a fantastic location. So sit and take a listen, my interview with Randy Fenton of Main Street Ice Cream in Hamburg, New York.
And you've been here since 2009. That's when we started the ice cream business. Yeah, 2009.
The ice cream business. We've had the building, probably about three years before that, we bought the building. Okay.
So we purchased the building three years before that, so that'd make it around 2006. Yes. Something like that, building went up for sale.
I never even walked through it, my wife walked through it with her dad, we were looking at it, and what we're sitting in now actually used to be a hair salon. Okay. So this was a hair salon with three apartments, she walked the building, she's like, called me, I was at work, called me and goes, hey, I just walked the building, I'm like, yeah, I think it's a really nice building.
I'm like, okay, I think we should put a bid in on it. I'm like, well, go ahead, put a bid in on it. So she did, we put a bid in on it.
I never got inside the building, never saw it. And our bid got turned down. We're like, well, it wasn't meant to be.
You know, it's overgrown with trees on the side and everything. I'm like, it is what it is. Two weeks later, we're out at, where I grew up on a farm out in Batavia, you get a call from a realtor going, hey, are you still interested in that building? I'm like, sure.
He goes, well, the owner doesn't like the way the other deal's going, he'd like to offer it to you guys. That's fantastic. So he offered it to us.
We ended up getting the building. He stayed in the building because it was his hair salon. So he had been here for like 30 years as a hairstylist.
And so he had a two-year with a renewable three-year lease with us. He got into a second year and said, I'm giving you a year notice. I'm done.
My legs are given out. I'm ready to move south. I'm giving you a year notice for life.
Great. So at that time, my wife, Denise was a teacher's aide at Hamburg. We knew he was going to leave at some point.
So I was like, oh, it'd be kind of cool to have our own business at the storefront. So we're going to look at getting our own business going. So when he gave us a year notice, we had a lot of time to decide what we want to do.
So in that time, we looked at about four businesses. One was a Carhartt clothing store. The other one was a high-end snowmobile clothing store.
The third was like an embroidery for socks for athletic teams or something like that. So you could put their logo on their sock or whatever. Okay.
That was the third one. And the fourth one was ice cream. So we looked at them all very closely.
Our kids were in need where they could kind of be on their own at home and everything if they needed to be. And after a while, we're like, you know what? We love ice cream. It's a great village.
Let's just go for it. And that's what we did. And that's how from 2008 to 2009, that's how we decided that let's try an ice cream business.
I like it. We did. I like it.
Yeah. Now I'm focusing the attention over here on the wall with the milk bottles. Now is this predating being a commercial landlord? No.
So if you go back in my wife's family background and my background, I grew up on a farm. We had a cash crop and a hog farm. Right next door to us was my great uncle's dairy farm.
So I grew up right next to a dairy farm and drank the raw milk all my life growing up and everything. So I had connections with the dairy. My wife's father actually had a dairy processing plant up in Niagara Falls.
So he actually bought milk from farmers, pasteurized it, bottled it, and he had milk routes up in the Niagara County. So he worked out of Medina and then he worked out of Niagara Falls. And he did that for years.
So they've been kind of connected to dairy for years. We've been connected through a farm. And so my father-in-law now collects milk bottles.
He has a collection of about 2,500 milk bottles. Wow. All Western New York.
And he will tell you everything there is to know about any dairy in Western New York. That's respectable. It is.
He's very intelligent. And you grew up drinking raw milk, so you're already immune to COVID. Pretty much.
Pretty much. That is true. I grew up in rural Chautauqua County.
Okay. So Sherman. Yep.
And actually our next door neighbor on each side of us, they had farms. And yep, had my fair share of... And I live with an autoimmune disorder. And for the life of me, I've had it for 25 years.
I still don't know why I wasn't sicker than I was. And then sometimes I wonder if it wasn't swimming in the creek, drinking raw milk. Right.
I joke with people all the time that my parents dipped me in raw sewage just to blow up my immune system. Yeah, probably so. Probably so.
Yeah. It's a great life. It was a fun life.
We had fun growing up. And then you've delved yourself into a great community here along Main Street. You're 200 yards from the circle.
Yeah. We're right in the heart of the Main Street. So that's kind of nice.
So Denise graduated from Hamburg High School. So she knew the area. I'm a transplant from Batavia.
So she knew the area, knew the village pretty well. And we were here for almost 10 years before we bought the building itself. So we knew the village pretty well.
So we thought, well, we can make this go. It's got everything to offer. I mean, you can take in the perfect family night or the perfect date night in Hamburg.
Literally walking up and down the street, you park in one spot, you can eat your way from one end dinner to dessert. Right. You know, then you've got the shops.
Yeah. They've done a nice job when they came in here and redid all the infrastructure in 2008, which was right the year before we opened. They put in all the circles, the new sidewalks, new roads, everything.
What a difference it made. I mean, I used to avoid coming through the village. I'd go around it because of the stoplights.
Now I will go through the village any day instead of taking side streets because of the circles. It's just much more efficient. Yeah.
Before they put the circles in, I used to come down to the community center down on Prospect. Yeah. We used to run events down there biannually.
And, you know, the stoplights were just sit, wait, sit, wait, sit, wait. And if you're lucky, half the time when people wouldn't wouldn't even stop. Yeah.
It was not the greatest for that, for getting through here. But now it's nice now though. What a difference.
What a difference. It's beautiful. You know, you come down the 219, you're coming off of over by Boston State Road.
You've got the farms out there. You got the hamburger breweries. You're coming into town.
Yeah. You drive up the hill. You make sure you drive the speed limit because there's always a cop sitting there.
There's never a time I haven't driven down there. And that cop wasn't sitting there. He was there tonight too.
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Yeah. It's got a lot to offer. A lot of food, a lot of good.
And they're all good places to eat. It's not like, oh, I'll never go to that place. They're just good places to eat.
You got good owners down here. Yeah, we do. We do.
So it is very good. I was at, you know, just before I walked in the store next door here. Oh, Kate and Molly.
Yeah. They were just leaving. Yeah.
And I'm saying hi to them real quick. Yeah. So that came about a little story there.
So 2017, I think it was. Um, so we had three apartments in the building here and they were, they were getting old. This was an old, old building built in the 1800s.
I mean, old enough that when we tore walls apart, there were papers, newspapers that the youth use for insulation. Yep. Half of it was in German.
Half of it was in English. So they, that was in the walls here. So we're going back into the 1880s, give or take.
Okay. So we tore, we tore the two thirds back of our building down because it was just to a point where you're going to spend a whole lot of money to fix up stuff and it's still an old building. So we wanted to keep the look of the front.
So we kept the facade, kept our main parlor area, but from our prep room back, we took the building down and built new and expanded, created a retail space for Molly and Kate's and they've been very successful. They were our first tenant in our retail area and they said they're never going to leave. And it is a very good location in the village for them to have a shop.
Very. You know, they do, they do a very nice business, very smart girls. And again, they bring in a lot of people to the village because I want to say 2017, were they here that summer? Yeah, they had the, they had, yeah.
Late, late, late summer. Yeah. Um, because my, my first time I ever watched this entire link was, I think it was the, the Burger Fest 2017.
I mean, it was probably the first time I ever went the distance down the street. And I remember this is all carved out with all of the, uh, the different places that were. Yeah.
Yeah. Burger Fest is a big deal. Again, canceled this year, unfortunately.
That brings in a lot of people and that's a fun, that's a fun day. That's a busy day. So yeah, that's kind of where, where we got our start.
All right. And then, so now have you always been, have you always been artesian? No, no. So we started out year number one with, um, Perry's out of Akron.
Um, and we had a little family connection there to Perry's because my great grandfather actually worked at Perry's and went on fishing trips up in Canada, um, up in South river, Canada with Morton Perry, the original owner of Perry's ice cream. So that was kind of cool. So there's a very close connection there.
And, um, you know, my family, we still go up there and we're now we're fifth generation going to the same cabins, fishing on the same lakes and everything else that my great grandfather did and Morton Perry. So we had Perry's for year number one. Um, and then, um, for whatever reasons, uh, Perry's decided that, um, there was too much competition down here between Perry's ice cream at our place and at a competing place.
And, and they said they were going to pull their product, not sell to us. And we said, probably don't want to do that, but they disagreed and said, no, we have to do that. I said, okay, go ahead.
You can pull your product. So then we switched over to Turkey Hill and we did a Turkey Hill for years. We had Turkey Hill in here.
Great product, great customer service. Um, after we switched over about three months later, Perry's came back and wanted our business back and offered it back to us. And I said, we're good.
We're all set. And we, and we stuck with Turkey Hill. And that was from 2010 up until about four years ago, again, right around the 2017 time when we tore the building down and redid it.
And then at that point, um, there's a lot of ice cream places around here and you really got, it, it, we wanted to go the extra step. We wanted to be unique. So in order to be unique, you really just got to start making your own ice cream.
So that's what we did. We took a trip down to Florida. Um, we're kind of big on American made stuff.
We heard there's a factory down there that manufactures an ice cream maker in Florida. So we took a trip down there. We got a tour of the factory.
We saw how these machines were made from a chunk of stainless steel to, you know, a very good top of the line ice cream maker. Um, we ordered the machine while we were there. And about three, four weeks later, it got delivered to our place here.
And that's what we've been doing ever since making ice cream. So we started out just making like three or four different kinds. We wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing and there is a little art to the getting used to it and flavoring things and everything else.
So we started off, like I said, with three or four different kinds. I mean, just started adding, starting adding. And now we're up to, I believe, 22 offerings of our homemade ice cream at all times.
So it stepped up pretty good. And then, uh, and so on top of your normal offerings, then you usually, so you have your list on the website of your monthly flavors. And I noticed like you have it, you have it out all your, all your long list coming.
Yeah. So we, we put out, my wife does a lot of the, between my wife and our daughter, they do all the marketing for social media. So, um, they'll come up with a list of flavors of the month.
We used to do flavors of the week, but they turned over too fast and people didn't get a chance to get in here because some would come up on their ice cream night. They didn't get a chance to come in here. So instead of doing one flavor of the week, we decided we're going to do four flavors for the month.
So now people have a chance to get in here and they can try all the flavors with over a month. And if they really like something, they know they got a month of that flavor being around. So we make that list up in the middle of the wintertime.
We will make that list up like, Hey, what do we want to try? Because we may have to go out and obtain some kind of flavorings and special flavorings that we need to make those and make sure that's available. And then we put the list together and we'll do the flavors month starting in March. And that list will be made all the way through when we close on Christmas Eve.
So it's posted, it's out there. And then you always find something extra that we'll add in you know, that we should try this and we're going to. So we have one that'll be coming out.
It's already made. I think it'll be coming out probably over the weekend. And it's a new one.
We've never had it, but we made it. And it said, I think it's going to be good. And the name of it's going to be, you drive me nuts.
And that's the name of the ice cream. So we're thinking that'll be kind of a cool thing. But yeah, so we're constantly thinking through trying to come up with new stuff all the time.
And because we have the machine and the know-how, that's where we can make ourself a little bit different than somebody else. I like that you were able to jump in with the machinery to get into your ice cream making process. I've seen in the past in different cities and different locations, some small scale operations that don't even have the machinery.
It's as crude as almost like they have the the paddle on the drill making ice cream. And I'm like, wow, you know, like, yeah, you really, if you really want to get the quality, you have to buy a quality machine to make it. And it does make a difference.
So yeah, and we can make, you know, our batches are small. Our batches are five gallon batches. That's the most I can put through the machine at one time is five gallons.
So I'm either making a two and a half gallon, half batch of something very unique, such as our wine ice cream. And we'll bring that out on special occasions. So like Mother's Day, we'll see, we'll have a wine ice cream in here that you have to be proofed when you come get it.
We'll do a wine ice cream, stuff like that. So we can do very unique. So a sidebar question, because I have it listed down here toward the bottom.
So a friend of mine brought up the wine ice cream and said, oh yeah, they have wine ice cream there. You're going to definitely need to ask about it because they don't have it all the time. Is that a collab with any specific winery or do you have a wine that you navigate to? It really doesn't.
It really doesn't. It's more the type of wine and the robustness of the wine and what the wine's made of or what kind of taste they try to bring out in the wine. We try to accent that taste a little bit because the milk base can overpower the taste of the wine.
So we have to be very careful on how we flavor that to get that flavor to come out. So no, we don't stick with one brand or one variety or anything else. I mean, our next wine that we do make comes from the new winery right across from the Hamburg Brewery down here.
Palisano? Yes. Is that like that? Pelicano? Pelicano. Pelicano.
Pelicano. So I've already bought the wine for that and I'm just waiting because we'll have it ready for Mother's Day. So we'll have some pints of wine ready for that.
Now they're hearing it first. Maybe you are hearing it first. Pelicano's wine.
Yeah, and they don't even know we did it. We just went in and bought a bottle and they'll get some advertisement out of it because we definitely will. We try and push our local stuff as much as possible.
An ice cream that you can get carded for. I like it. That's right.
Come with your ID. You're going to need it. Okay, so then on top of everything else, I have been an avid Instagram stalker.
Not an, you know, no secret. And then what brought me in here was what I thought was a legit joke but was not.
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