You read it in the subject line first, we are not selling bees, we’re selling dinner. Bee sales is kind of just a non-sequitur subject line attention grabber to increase email open rates which increases email read rates, which if I’m doing my job increases sales (but not of bees), which I apologize for (the non-sequitur), because it was never our intention to sell bees. I’m not sure how successful it would be to sell bees here. “Hey, you. Want some bees?” Probably really bad, actually. Especially during the pandemic? I can’t imagine many business sectors more impacted than restaurants over than last year except for a theoretical bee seller in Metro Boston. (No offense to any real bee sellers based in Boston reading this.) So frankly, it’s lucky we’re selling dinners instead. As always, you can pre-order and pay for Gracie's in Union or Earnest Drinks in Kendall Square. You can order delivery from both locations just by clicking the links. Please do that some of the rainy days this week or else we'll be vv lonely. Here's the only good gender reveal if you feel the need to do a gender reveal? Want to work at Gracie's or Earnest Drinks? Apply here. Please. This is a mean illusion.
I'm in Cape Cod with reprehensibly poor internet service at the moment, so I really hope I can keep this newsletter shirt, I mean short, but I would be reprehensibly remiss if I didn't at least tell you again about the new dinner menu at Earnest Drinks which starts at 5pm every night of the week and features lots of delectable options and something for everyone I think. There is a duck confit you will love if you like duck confit and and a tagliatelle bolognese you will love if you like bolognese and also this bolognese is not made with meat so you can eat it if you don't eat meat. And there is a three way, no two three ways: a bbq pork three way, and a vegan three way. If you were thinking it was the other kind of three way, that's OK, because other people were probably thinking it was that kind of three way, too. Up above when I was talking about reprehensibly poor internet service, we're talking driving-to-the-library-parking-lot-at-10pm-to-process-payroll poor. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Additionally, when I say the duck confit is good, I say that as someone who has never once ordered duck at a restaurant in my life because I'm not the kind of person who orders duck from a restaurant. Never thought about myself as a duck guy, but maybe James is turning me into one. Did you know that we don't get the name bathroom from the room the bath is in, but from a serial killer who was rumored to bathe in blood whose last name happened to be Bathery? Me neither.
There is no wine tasting this week because Chris will be in Vermont and if I ran the wine tasting all the wines would taste like whiskey because they'd be whiskey. This is the worst treadmill of all time.
What can we say about ice cream that hasn't already been said. Well, fucking plenty I bet, I'm verbose as hell. In any case, we made some pints of some new and old flavors this week. We made Smurf, which is blueberry marshmallow, which we made for Fluff Fest one year, but that may be only available for scoops and cookie dough, which we've made rarely, which may only be available by scoop, too, and Carrot Cake, which is not my preferred cake, and I can't remember the other one, oh yeah strawberry, which we make sometimes, but it feels special every time because of how nice the shop smells when we make it (very). Here's a list of the pints we have in Union Square right this second. Here's a cat (two of them) where a cat shouldn't be. Delivery is an option when you order off our website.
Our hours:
Gracie's in Union 2-9pm every day.
Earnest Drinks in Kendall 11-9 Monday-Friday, 12-8 on Saturday, 12-7 on Sunday.
Your favorite ice cream shop will write you a poem or haiku if you want. If you don't want to tell me what the poem should be about, here's a link to a picture book I wrote a couple years ago.
Hey look, the charcuterie board is back. Hey look at what it's like to cut a tree from ? 50 feet up. Hey look at this dolphin doing cartwheels. More like dolfun imo. This dog can't bear it.
If you're on the clock for a gift we have plastic gift cards at both shops that have to be purchased in person ($15 minimum) and digital gift cards you canpurchase online for Earnest Drinks in Kendall Square and Gracie's in Union Square. DO IT. Sorry. Or I don't know, maybe a made to order ice cream pie? An update: our new T-Shirts and new Tank Tops are supposed to be arriving this weekend and ought to be for sale in the stores on... let's say Monday?
This is the same paragraph every week about needing a cook. Like every other restaurant in the area, we're still hoping to hire a cook. That link may be dead, but we still need a cook. Send a note if you're interested. We're going to try to pay you right, give you a good lifestyle outside of work, and give you schedule flexibility in case you have other stuff going on. Our next cook will be guaranteed at least $18 an hour, room to grow, and we demand you maintain a life outside of the shop because there are more important things than work. We're not open late, so you won't be working late. Additionally, our shop has a brand new HVAC so you won't be sweating your ass off on a poorly ventilated hot line with someone screaming at you. My favorite part of this flamingo sneaking into a movie theater is the man who holds the door.
This is the part of the newsletter where we talk about freezer troubles, and oh boy. We closed Wednesday afternoon because it was just too hot inside the shop. The hardening cabinet which has been so much trouble was at 115 degrees on Tuesday morning, but Freezer Mike came and said it was fine, it just can't run if the room it's in is over 90 degrees, which it was. Freezer Mike was mad at me because it's unfair to make freezers this finicky run when it's that hot. The good news is the dealer for the new freezer told me we'll get a shipping date next week for the new freezer. He's not saying it'll ship next week or even soon, just that we'll know next week when it's shipping. The bad news is that freezer will also give off a lot of heat so unless the HVAC improves running the shop during heatwaves will become increasingly untenable. You can see what ice cream we have in Union by clicking here.
Thank you for reading, forward this to your friends so they can read it, too, and thank you for all your previous support. I don't think there's any exclamations in the newsletter this week. Would you like a book recommendation? How about Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar. It's a book about a the American born son of immigrants and about being American and Muslim at the same time and being Muslim in America, possibly roughly biographical? You should read it. Buy it at Porter Square Books or Amazon.
Gracie's + Earnest Drinks team
Visit ordergracies.com or orderearnest.com and select delivery before check out. Getting stuff delivered to your house is fun.