Boom Town Creamery
“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was one of my favorite movies growing up,” recalls Chef Kayli Bartnicki. Bartnicki is the pastry chef and Angela Muir is the owner behind Boom Town Creamery, the ice cream lover’s paradise located on 23rd Street and now also in Edmond and South OKC. “I knew I needed a chef, because that’s the quality of ice cream I wanted,” Muir says. On the purpose-of-food creation spectrum with the price-per-calorie-ratio consideration on one side and art-for-art’s-sake on the other, Bartnicki, a Platt College graduate, starts at art.
Of course, Boom Town has your standard flavors – vanilla, chocolate, cookies and cream, cookie dough, etc. – but then there’s the Willy Wonka styles: Breakfast Milk-a-licious, What’s Up Doc? (fresh carrot, mint, and lime sorbet), Garden of Earthly Delights (juniper and lemon honey jam ice cream), and the recent short run of savory spicy pimento cheese ice cream.
Even Boom Town’s standard flavors go deep. In most ice cream parlors, chocolate is flavored cheaply by pre-measured cocoa powder packets. Boom Town, on the other hand, uses 72% dark chocolate. Being a creative in ice cream, like many food and drink endeavors, has its difficulties. “I’ve worked in a lot of places where you can come up with a great idea and if it doesn’t have a profit margin, you’re going to get passed over. Here, we balance it,” Bartnicki explains. At Boom Town, simple flavors subsidize Chef Bartnicki’s Willy Wonka-styled mad genius.
Bartnicki’s creativity extends beyond flavor combinations, too. As she describes the considerations baked into new flavors, the most interesting element is everyone’s favorite fourth dimension, time. When you consume ice cream, your taste buds can’t register all flavors, textures, and senses on the first bite due to the newly introduced cold temperatures. As your palate acclimates and ice cream warms, new elements can be experienced, around which Bartnicki designs new flavors. Unsurprisingly, she’s been eyeing Penn State’s short course in ice cream science, of which Muir is very supportive.
Muir and Bartnicki believe in ice cream’s ability to expose people to creative food techniques at a reasonable price point. “To be able to create something that’s art, that’s also familiar and comforting, is something I love,” Muir posits. “We’ve done it, it’s successful, and I think more people will open places that push boundaries,” Bartnicki adds. The perennial and legitimate critique of intensely creative, high-end dining is the cost, i.e., if you want to try something new and have complex flavors, textures, and sensations, be ready to spend a paycheck. Not so at Boom Town.
On a personal note, I grabbed a small cup of the spicy pimento cheese ice cream on my way out. When I was a child, my mother and I ordered pimento cheese during regular trips to Kamp’s Meat Market. The visits remain sweet memories. Back in the present, I opened my car door, leaned on the seat, and took three bites. I was transported back to those childhood moments on the first bite. The heat kicked in on the third bite. I laughed in equal parts nostalgic joy and astonishment. I might never be able to have that flavor again, but I might follow Chef Kayli Bartnicki to the ends of the ice cream earth.
> Boom Town Creamery, 605 NW 23rd St, Oklahoma City,
(405) 423-5419; 17 E 5th St., Edmond, (405) 439-3004; 10740 S May
Ave, #116, Oklahoma City, (405) 439-3004, boomtowncreamery.com
