ice cream

At Ron's in Hyde Park.

West Napoli Cafe, at Centre and Bellevue streets, wants to branch out from pizza and subs to ice cream, pastries and coffee. Its owners go before the West Roxbury Neighborhood Council tonight seeking its blessings for plans to turn the old Absi Jewelers next door on Bellevue street into the Ria Cafe.

The council meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. at the E-5 police station. The proposal doesn't need zoning permission, but it would need a food-serving license from the Boston Licensing Board.

Currently, West Roxbury has one dedicated ice-cream parlor - iScreamWorks - and two bakeries - Sugar and Baker Baker.

Vargas and Vargas Insurance will spring for a free ice-cream cone for anybody who shows up at Savin Scoop, 107 Savin Hill Ave. between 1 and 2:30 p.m. today.

The agency says it's doing this as "a random act of kindness" following Sunday's stabbing, as well as part of the neighborhood "cash mob" program, in which resident flood a particular business and buy its stuff.

The Friendly’s Fribble has real ice cream once again, MassLive reports.

Oh, who cares? What's been killing Friendly's for the past decade isn't the food, or the decor. It's the service. Maybe if they can figure out how to serve fast food fast instead of agonizingly slow, they might have a shot. They shut the Friendly's in West Roxbury (West Roxbury! Can you think of a neighborhood more quintessentially Friendly's than West Roxbury?) and then the one in Dedham, because people finally got tired of waiting forever for service. Well, maybe there is hope:

Employees all had to re-interview and be rehired for their jobs and had to be retrained with an eye toward faster service and a cleaner, more pleasant restaurant.

It's like the return of Kozmo.com, only colder. Uber, the online taxi dispatching concern, is launching an app to summon an ice-cream truck to your locale - assuming your locale is the Back Bay, South End, Beacon Hill, North End, Financial District, Seaport or South Boston - between noon and 6 p.m.

You'll have to buy a minimum of five ice-cream things - your credit-card will be dinged a minimum of $12.

Roche Bros. is now selling five-liter kegs of root beer - just the thing to go with the three-gallon tubs of ice cream that's the smallest size you can get at Puritan Ice Cream in Roslindale.

Boston Tweet reports there'll be no hemp ice cream for Back Bay residents.

Wicked Local Somerville reports that JP Licks is coming out with a line of hemp-based non-dairy ice cream. The press release doesn't say what the chain will call the stuff, but Pot Pie seems too chickeny.

State Treasurer Steve Grossman had some Schweddy Balls today and tweets about the experience:

Latest flavor gets a 5/10. Too much vanilla. Not enough malted milk balls.

You may recall that Grossman made trips to ice-cream places a part of his successful election campaign last year.

News that Stop & Shop doesn't want to touch Ben & Jerry's Schweddy Balls is apparently spurring a mini-frenzy among the local Twitterati desperate for fudge-covered rum balls. So here's a (no doubt far from complete) list of local emporia where you can get your hands on some Schweddy Balls:

• Back Bay: Marlborough Market (via Penny Cherubino).
• Beverly: Henry's (Eileen).
• Charlestown: Johnny's Foodmaster (Cara).
• Chelsea: Market Basket (John-W).
• Chestnut Hill: Star Market (Amy Pas).
• Northboro: Wegmans (Christian Holt).
• South Boston: Tedeschi, W. Broadway and 7-Eleven, E. Broadway (Say-Mo and Molly).
• Porter Square: Shaw's (Mamajoan).

The Wall Street Journal gets the scoop: Cheap food served slow no longer cutting it.

Boston Restaurant Talk reports Carvel, purveyor of soft ice cream and Fudgie the Whale, is going to make a second go at the Boston market where it slowly withered and died last time around.

In a way, it's flattering, Judy Herrell says: Yet another ice-cream maker is taking a page from her partner Steve's book and making plans to sell hand-crafted ice cream.

But the latest Steve's Ice Cream is going too far, Judy Herrell continued in an interview with Universal Hub. As that New York-based venture prepares to open up shop in Somerville, it's unfairly playing up a connection to Steve Herrell that doesn't exist, she says.

Ed note: Post corrected to reflect that it's not the original Steve who is bringing back the Steve's name.

A guy who once scoped ice cream at the original Steve's in Davis Square has restarted Steve's and is planning a return to its original Somerville roots, but this time as a purveyor of small batches of artisanal ice cream.

We learned of the re-Steveization of Somerville from Megan, who reports on a party last night at Taza, Somerville's artisanal chocolate maker and a Steve's partner.

A summer opening is planned; alas, they didn't say exactly where in Somerville. Steve's current company bought back the name from whichever defunct entity was holding onto it after what became a national chain collapsed in the late 1990s, and it recently opened its first shop in Brooklyn:

If ice cream can be said to have a terroir, the new Steve's is definitely that of Brooklyn. The company, which began developing and testing new flavors last year, is creating partnerships with a number of the borough's artisanal producers: To date, Salvatore Bklyn is supplying the ricotta in Steve's strawberry ricotta ice cream, Kombucha Brooklyn's eponymous brew is the base for a kombucha sorbet, and Plowshares coffee stars in a coffee-cinnamon ice cream.

Charlie Redd, late of the South End's Coda, reports his Redd's in Rozzie at what used to be Geoffrey's on Washington Street, is now open.

So far, dinner hours only (1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday). Full bar, he reports. The Boston Licensing Board tomorrow considers his request to buy the liquor license from Beth McNichols, who owns the building and who ran Salute before leasing it to Geoffrey's and then, briefly, Adams Park, before teaming up with Redd.

Meanwhile, looks like somebody is getting ready to open an ice-cream place on Truman Parkway at Fairmount Avenue, next to Cappy's Pizza. Although it's called Bean & Cream, and has a coffee-cup in its logo, Hyde Park denizen Mike Ball informs us (see the comments), it'll be run as an ice-cream place, not a coffee house.

Ben and Jerry's and b.good face off, angrily no doubt, on Dunster Street between 4 and 6 p.m. Both'll have truck on the street giving out samples - ice cream for Ben and Jerry and milkshakes (milkshakes? That's what she said). And they'll be collecting donations for the Boston Back on My Feet, a homeless support group. Whichever company's truck collects the most donations will then claim Boston ice-cream-truck supremacy.

Beantown Bloggery yums up the Brighton ice-cream place.

The Brighton Allston Improvement Association tonight considers several possible projects in Brighton, including a proposed Naked Pizza at Washington and Foster (name presumably refers to the pizza, not its servers) and an Abbots Frozen Custard across from St. E's at 260 Washington St. Also, the 7-Eleven in Oak Square wants to start selling beer and wine.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at the Elks Lodge, 326 Washington St..

Allston Cafe, at the corner of Harvard and Brighton avenues, tweeted today it's closing forever:

It brings us great sadness to announce that Saturday Nov. 13th will be our last day of business. Sat 8-3pm, Sun 2-6pm Open House Goodbye :(

The cafe started as a Herrell's ice-cream shop in 1984, but split from Herrell's last year when the chain decided to bring uniformity to its outlets as part of an effort to go national and the local operators decided to try to keep their quirky local character.

Ed. Note: No immediate word on what will replace the cafe, or whether Don Law is buying the location so he can put in a Brighton Ice Cream Parlor.

Cleary Squared points out a letter in the Herald from somebody who thinks the cops should be giving out yogurt instead.

Earlier:
Crime-fighting Hoodsie Cups to roll out on the streets of Boston.

Jglee explains why she just can't get enough of its ice cream, even in the winter.

Boston Restaurant Talk reports the chain has started advertising for workers at a new Friendly's Express at an unspecified location in Brookline.

Wicked Local Wellesley reports.

Photo of the "Not Closing!" sign a few days ago.

Bonus fun fact: The guy who bought the chain to squeeze every last nickel out of it is getting his MBA at Babson.

The Herald reports they'll be going for Chapter 11. Memo to Brigham's officials: "Well-oiled" is perhaps not the best metaphor to use for an ice-cream company.