Fentons Creamery

Reviews 4

ER

Eric Andal

Fentons! Those with keen eagle eyes will remember its little cameo in the movie up. Perhaps you too headed to Fentons after watching this touching tale of an old man and asian boy, your heart full of happiness and your eyes red from all the tears that you know you cried... cmon, dont lie to me, no matter how much of a man you are YOU CRIED DURING UP BECAUSE I DID AND IM PRETTY SECURE ABOUT MY MASCULINITY. ...But I digress. For those familiar with Fentons, they are aware of all of the ice creamy going-ons of the establishment. The originally opened up in Oakland and now theyve been running this Vacaville locale for some time now. Theres lots of places where you can get ice cream and eats, but Fentons stands out to a lot of people for its perceived retro/old school stylings. So how does Fentons hold up against the rest? Environs. Its a word you hear me use quite often in my reviews. Its my fancy/nerdy way of encompassing everything from the interior decorationg to the silverware. For me, environs are part of the so-called je nais se quoi of an establishment. Here at Fentons, they have really nice environs. Its very clean on the inside, so no worry about sloppy of messy conditions in here. Up front is pretty general. You have your ice cream counter with several various flavors. They also have all the makings for sundaes as well as milkshakes/malts. Further in, youll find the dining area, all nice and neat. Service is nothing to complain about. Service is prompt and friendly, though nothing out of the ordinary either. The ice cream here? Its good. Probably better than OK. But its nothing that stands out in particular. Dont go here expecting a Bi-Rite/Humphrey Slocombe experience. The ice cream here seems like its meant to wow more of the younger and much much older crowd who appreciate simple flavors. Nothing wrong with that, but just now a wow factor for me here. Ill say the same about the food here. Its good and definitely better than, say, Applebees. But its just not anything thats special. All in all, I think Fentons is OK. While I probably wont go out of my way to head here much often, I probably will bring friends here from out of town that feel like doing something really touristy that involves ice cream... BUT FIRST, theyll have to sit through a viewing of Disney Pixars UP. And by that I mean THEYRE GONNA HAVE TO SIT THROUGH MY MAN-TEARS.

---

JE

Jessica Cu

Ive been wanting to come to Fentons since I saw the movie Up! This Fentons is located in the Vacaville shopping mall near Jelly Belly. They offer a large variety of flavors (see wall for full list, they dont display all flavors behind the glass), and also sell their famous marshmallow cream, Black and Tan caramel chews, spicy peanut brittle, and a variety of other fruit toppings and ice cream cakes. I ordered the smallest size - a petite ($3.75) which was very large, but you can only select one flavor. * Caramel almond crunch (5 stars): Loved the large swirls of caramel, crunchy nuts or toffee pieces. * Coffee cookie dream (5 stars): This decadent combo includes cookies and cookie dough in coffee ice cream. The slight saltiness from the cookie dough and large chunks of cookies complemented the coffee ice cream perfectly. Their most popular flavor. * Swiss milk chocolate (3 stars): Looks like cookies and cream ice cream but has small chocolate chip pieces inside. The flavor is more like a malted milk chocolate. * Vanilla: Too melty, too sweet. A sign of a truly good ice cream shop is the ability to execute a perfect vanilla. This is the base of many of their ice creams, but fortunately their interesting ice cream combinations made up for a less than amazing vanilla ice cream base. * Cookies and cream (2.5 stars): Lovedddd the huge chunks of soft Oreo cookie pieces, but the overly sweet and melty vanilla ice cream took away from it. * Mango (1 star): Magnolia and Mitchells are way better. This one was too sweet, melty and tasted artificial. Overall fun stop especially for the Up fans! The ice cream was generally pretty mediocre but the interesting flavor combinations made up for it. I would recommend trying the flavors with more toppings over the basic / traditional flavors.

---

JA

Jason Hussein

Wow, I didnt think Fentons could get any better than its Oakland counterpart! They picked a location in which i was able to find a parking right away instead of stalking people for 15 mins. They also upgraded on space inside the store! No more cluttering spaces or getting to know random strangers on a personal level accidentally. The place is nice and clean. I was attended to right away by the hostess and sat down and the waitress came very promptly. The crab salad was fresh and you can tell they use the good crab not the one you get from the can for 99 cents. It was filled with many toppings which were equally fresh and blended with the salad. The other entree was the Philly (chicken) sandwich accompanied by golden curly fries. The sandwich itself was decent and the bread was also fresh. Golden curly fries was cooked right (not dragon fire burnt or Alaskan freezing). For any of you that is looking for the desert part, Im sorry it took so long. I chose the cookie dough and the dutch chocolate chip scoops. cookie dough was great with big satisfying cookie dough chunks included in the ice cream instead of microscopic ones some companies use. The dutch chocolate chip is a whole different dimension of dark chocolate ice cream. Creamy bites with chocolate chips in between. Another desert that someone i went with ordered Pistachio and rocky road. Let me stop you right there! If you love pistachio just yell pistachio ice cream went the waitress asks you how are you because it is the best pistachio tasting ice cream I ever invited into my taste buds! So if you are in the area and blessed with the presence of Fentons, you dont ask questions. You drive straight there and order some of the ice cream and tell your diet that you apologize in advance.

---

TH

The Gnome

Lousy. Horrible. Completely Disrespectful. Ice cream was fantastic. I went there by myself while it was temporarily a little busy and was given a 30 minute wait time. People cleared out and I was seated in 10. Problem is I was seated at the bar without even being asked if I wanted to sit there. Before I could tell the hostess I wasnt interested in sitting at the bar the open tables had been filled. I was stuck between the servers station on my left with all the servers standing around waiting to get food and a pile of empty water pitchers and trays to my right staring at the salad station with an obviously wiped out cook who had already pulled a full shift at her other job(not her fault, people got to earn a living in these low wage days), grill and wall with my back to everything going on. Friends had come in and I didnt notice because everything was at my back. Point is that there is no excuse for not asking if it was ok to sit me there. Even as a single person ordering a $10.49 ice cream they made far more profit from me than the 4some who were behind me, sat at the table that should have been given to me and only ordered coffee and iced tea. 99.9% of single people NEVER want to sit at the bar for a reason. It is an especially and inexcusably horrible experience at the Nut Tree Fentons. Whether it is a selfish greed policy by Fentons to not give tables to singles but squeeze them into the horrible counter experience or a relapse by the hostess to not ask and just sit me there while giving the open tables and the proper social atmosphere that comes with it to those who came in after me is not acceptable and should never happen at any restaurant, ever.

---

---