Mario’s Lemonade

I don’t really know what to write here; I’m really just writing this up to have a link to Mario’s Lemonade on my blog. It wasn’t exceptional, it wasn’t bad, but it was cheap as hell. I did appreciate the cheapness. Our tour guide Adam told us that his favorite Italian ice place was around the corner but not as well known as Mario’s, and as long as we were in the neighborhood, we were going to get one of these things. An afterthought on an overcast morning might be a destination on a hot afternoon.

Take a look at all of these flavors:

Which one are you the most interested in? Probably not the one I’m interested in. When Adam told us that we had to get the Watermelon Lemonade and we should probably get the Lemon Lemonade (sic) for the experience, that combo sounded good. Then I walked across the street.

I wanted to try the root beer, the blue raspberry, and the coconut. It didn’t take him much time to convince us to only have those two, even though there were four of us.

As a food blogger, the last thing you do is order something someone else ordered. Aside: I ate with my family today and they ordered three clam chowders – I mean, it was a total clam chowdery day, but come on! Here I was with another food blogger and we broke this rule, twice. The lemon was the best lemon ice thing I’ve ever experienced, which isn’t saying much, because it’s not one of those things you’re just going to go gaga over. Are there any italian ice connoisseurs out there that care to debate me on this? I’d welcome your input in the comments section.

Look at this lemon:

There’s lemon in the lemon ice. Right now, I’m trying to think of ways to tell you why this shaved ice was better than some other shaved ice you’ve had before. Comes down to three things:

The Smoothness of the shave (quite a finely shaved smoothness)
The Sweetness of the ice (not too tart, just barely sweet
The Lemon chunks in the ice

Do you know that people can’t tell the difference between eggs from free-range (real free-range, not factory free-range) chickens and those of just plain old factory farm chickens by taste alone? When you can see the deeper, richer orange color of the yolk, you subliminally decide that it’s a better flavor also, but vision taken away, you can’t tell. Same with ice cream in round packages. Is it really the best lemon ice I’ve ever experienced or does it just LOOK LIKE IT? Now I’m second guessing my taste buds.

Of course, there’s watermelon in the watermelon ice, too:

Looks interesting, but it was too lemony. It was too lemony because they use the lemon ice for the base of all these flavors, then they add the watermelon flavor. I say they’re skimping here, but just to reiterate, I wanted the Root Beer.

I’m on a train to Rhode Island right now and I gotta tell you, I would probably pay $5 for a large one of these right now. I know I said it wasn’t a standout before, but there are times when the only thing that could satisfy you would be an X, and right now my X is a slush. I would even rather have one of these than a Watermelon Slush Puppy from Andy’s Handy Store where I grew up in Yarmouth, ME (I wonder if I’ll rank for that on Google … ). My brother probably knows best that this is what I want the most when I go back to my home town. I would get a Romeo’s Cheese Pizza or a Mushroom Slice from Donatelli’s, but both of those places closed after I graduated high school.

Just got a new blog post idea! Sometimes you just gotta start writing.

Mario’s Lemonade
1068 W Taylor St
Chicago, IL 60607
No Phone