$120 a gallon for raw milk ice cream | get used to hyper~inflation

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FOOD- THE DISH- Ice cream 2.0: When technology meets raw milk

If Perfect Flavor ice cream is as perfect as its website (perfectflavor.com)-- a handsome creation that allows you to build your own pints of homemade, organic ice cream-- then Dish readers are in for a perfectly tasty treat. (There's also a retail location on East Main Street in Waynesboro, which opened on March 3, and also has a coffee shop.)

Basically, customers pick an ice cream base, add ingredients on the site, and await the arrival of the tasty cool goodness, which appears a day or two later packed in dry ice. At the retail store, you can do the same thing, plus they have pre-made ice cream for sale.

The brainchild of local pastry chef and dessert caterer Lynsie Watkins and her fiancé, local techie Colin Steele, an early employee of America Online and founder of business site WebG2, Inc., Perfect Flavor is the first ice cream-processing plant to open in Virginia in the last 30 years, according to Watkins. In addition, in the spirit of the slow food movement, many of the ingredients in the ice cream are supplied by local growers, including Polyface Farm in Swoope, Holsinger Farm in Waynesboro, and Harvest Thyme Herbs in Mint Spring.

Watkins, a Sweet Briar college grad who spent time in Paris, says she owes her inspiration to French food artistry, especially with desserts.

"I lived literally above a local food market," she says, "and was constantly inspired by the French regard for food in terms of freshness and local sourcing."

In addition, she says she was inspired locally by her time working at the Main Street Market, where she was exposed to our local food movement.

"That propelled me to focus on sourcing all of my ingredients locally," she says. "If you want strawberry ice cream in December, we can't help you, because our farmers don't have any berries! This is the way things used to be, and we're returning to that model of connection to food, to the land it comes from, and the people who grow it."

All this goodness don't come cheap: four pints cost about $90, eight pints $120-- plus shipping!

"There's nobody in the county doing what we do with this degree of quality," says Watkins, anticipating inevitable comments about ice cream sticker-shock from some Dish readers. "We wanted to make a product that was the best we could find anywhere."

by DAVE MCNAIR, published March 6, 2008