Nobody has mentioned York Castle. Great tropical flavors

I love York. Their mango ice cream is out of this world. Makes an excellent milk shake.

We may have to do an Ice Cream Tour this summer, once it finally stays warm.

And the Guinness Ice Cream was top notch as well!

York Castle has interesting tropical flavors like soursop and guanabana, more common ones like pineapple and coconut and weird ones like Guiness.

Stopped by York Castle for a milkshake a couple of weeks ago. They get the award for most unique flavors including Guinness and sour-sop. It's not cheap-about $5 for a milkshake, but well worth it or a once in a while treat on a weekend like this.

York Castle IS the original Gifford's.

York Castle is now serving up Caribbean food. There's no menu, per se, just a handwritten list of dishes that's posted daily. This weekend they were serving up oxtail, curry chicken, and jerk wings (all served with rice and peas). Oxtail was $6.99 and the others were $5.99.

I ordered the curry chicken. The portion was pretty small, but not bad considering the price. It was served in a small take out container with about two scoops of rice and beans, and half scoop of curry chicken, and a couple of curry chicken wings. The wings and rice were especially dry and a little bland. The curry chicken itself had decent flavour but didn't have much gravy with it. It could have used some scotch bonnet sauce on the side to kick up the heat a little.

It's worth going back there another time to give them another shot. It's not bad, but not good. If you've got the extra 10 minutes to run down the road to Tropicana or Negril, then I'd suggest the latter. I like having an option that is a couple of mins from my house if I'm really craving it.

Not only is York Castle serving Caribbean food, it may be undergoing a name change to "Tropical Ice" in the next few months (*). The person I talked with implied that it would be more of a slow phase-in, rather than an overnight change. Same ownership, same product, but with expanded savory items (my impression is that they're just dabbling in savories right now, which is why I don't want to be too harsh in the next paragraph).

I had that Curry Chicken ($5.99) as well, and xcanuck describes it very accurately, right down to the impressively small styrofoam container. "It's not bad, but not good" is exactly what I thought of it, and yes, it desperately needs to be amped up with some habanero sauce. At least a portion of this dish was heated in the microwave (maybe only the rice and beans, because after the microwave treatment, it still took about five minutes for the dish to be finished). Mine came topped with some fried, sweet plantains as well. We'll see how things go, but at the moment, there's no doubting that for curry chicken in Silver Spring, Negril rules the (forgive me...) roost.

Cheers,
Rocks.

(*) They even have Tropical Ice advertisement-postcards by the door, saying "Formerly York Castle," and featuring an unfortunate logo: a smiling palm tree with hands and feet called "Tropi." It looks like a dancing raisin.

NB While updating the dining guides, I noticed this coupon for "one free scoop of any two flavors" (not sure how to interpret that, but see coupon for details, etc.)

Cheers,
Rocks.

I was picking up dinner at the local Jamacian joint around the corner and saw that they had pints of York Castle ice cream in their freezer for sale.

You're in Olney if I recall. I also saw pints for sale at a Caribbean market in Beltsville a couple months ago, in a little shopping center on Powder Mill Road just west of Route 1. And though I've never seen it, I think there's even a second York Castle right at that intersection where all the ice cream is made (can anyone confirm?)

Cheers,
Rocks.

FWIW, I tried the chicken curry a second time. It didn't come with the wings or plantains but appeared to be freshly made and was much much much better than the first time. So it appears to be a bit of a crap shoot - are you getting freshly made food, or heated up leftovers. In the case of the rice and beans, it makes a huge difference. As Don mentioned, it's all in bad need of some good scotch bonnet sauce. Thankfully (for us), our trip last week resulted in a more Marie Sharps in the pantry, which will tide us over!

I just saw a sign for York Castle Ice Cream on the window of a Jamaican place that sits on the corner of 6 & H NE.

Jamaica Jamaica in Herndon also carries their ice cream.