Small-Batch Scoops with Bold Flavors and Local Roots
Most people are shocked to learn that grocery store fruits like apples, oranges and grapes can be a few months to a year old by the time we take them home. Big Feeling Ice Cream founder and self-proclaimed Driscoll’s strawberry hater Alex Maddalena is making sure that Rhode Islanders don’t have to settle for old fruit … at least not in their ice cream.
Since starting Big Feeling in 2018, Maddalena has continued to use the best produce, all local during the summertime, for his ice creams. “You can taste the difference … what was on a vine or tree a couple days ago is now in a scoop of ice cream.”
The Big Feeling brand has spread across Providence, appearing at local spots like Ceremony Tea, Fox Point Grocers, Stock Culinary Goods, Kow Kow and Frank & Laurie’s. Now, with a newly opened storefront on the west side of Providence, Big Feeling is supplying even more Rhode Islanders with its unique flavors, including brown butter polenta ice cream with roasted strawberry ripple and crew member Molly Jacques’ vegan ambrosia ice cream with coconut flakes and citrus ripple.
But how do these amazing flavors come to be?
It all starts at the farm. Ideas for new flavors are based on which fruits and veggies are available. Japanese plums and heirloom tomatoes from Wishing Stone Farm become a red and yellow swirl plum-tomato sorbet. Blueberries and corn from Four Town Farm are transformed into vegan blueberry corn cob sherbet. Maddalena even has a top-secret local passionfruit guy and some secret foraging spots for ingredients like magnolia petals and beach rose (Rosa rugosa).
In the summertime, the competitive race between restaurants for the best limited-quantity local fruits is, as Maddalena describes it, “a [weekly] Black Friday for chefs.”
Once the fruit is secured, the ice cream base is prepared. Big Feeling makes a French-custard-style ice cream base using Wright’s Dairy Farm’s cream and milk, plus egg yolks, to achieve optimal taste and texture. With the price of eggs doubling in the past year, Maddalena got real about having to alter the base recipe. “A case of 15 boxes of eggs has risen from $50 to $100.” His priority is to ensure his ice cream remains custardy while his prices remain accessible.
For the fruit ice creams, depending on the flavor goals, the fruit can be simmered for hours for a jam consistency or roasted low and slow for a more concentrated flavor. Then, it’s added as either a ripple or a mix-in.
Next, Maddalena places the ice cream base in the batch freezer churner that incorporates air and low temperatures to make the ice cream a soft-serve consistency. Eight minutes later, it goes into the deep freeze to await scooping.
Finally comes the naming of the flavors. While Maddalena used to take on this task solo, he’s excited that staff members are beginning to debut their own flavor creations with names that embody the Big Feeling spirit. John-Francis Quiñonez’s “Crema de Laurel” (brown sugar ice cream with bay leaf and orange) and Tarik Bartel’s “Can I Call U Rose” (goat cheese and pink peppercorn ice cream with cherry-rose ripple) are just a few of the many amazing new flavors.
The “Big Feeling spirit” is a truly special one of joy and community care. Amid recent anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ policies in the U.S., Maddalena emphasizes that he hopes to support his staff and larger community by doing daily staff check-ins and donating part of his proceeds to local nonprofits.
“I have the ability to do something nice for someone [through my business] and small acts of kindness carry a different weight these days,” he says.
Whether the unique flavors, the local produce, or the joyful community is what draws you in, there are many reasons to love Big Feeling.
Brown University graduate Arielle Martinez Cohen is a journalist, musician and social worker originally from Los Angeles. Her writing has been published in Refinery29 and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Big Feeling Ice Cream
769 Westminster St., Providence • BigFeeling.co
