Broom's Bloom

[porcupine]

Great little place on Rt 543. Had an excellent grilled cheese sandwich (lightly crispy all over with a mix of cheeses that kept it from being uni-dimensional, but not too complex) and some of the best ice cream in recent memory (fresh cream taste but not stupidly rich). I had strawberry and mixed berry.

Any time I'm on that stretch of I-95 I'll be making the detour.

website

[porcupine]

Broom's Bloom is really a neat little place. In addition to the soups, salads, sandwiches, and ice cream at the lunch/dinner counter, they sell diary products, eggs, and meats from nearby farms, and their own cheese.

Yesterday I had a half grilled cheese sandwich (love that they do this), and a half and half crab soup: one half Maryland crab, one half cream of crab. The soups were exactly what I expected: well executed renditions of basic recipes. Nothing fancy or trendy. Just good and satisfying.

For an additional 85 cents lunch comes with a "very small" ice cream. Note that "very small" here is about the size of any other scoop shop's medium.

The ice cream base recipe is posted near the counter: cream, milk, sugar, nonfat dry milk powder, stabilizer (guar gum, locust bean gum, carrageenan). (I wrote that from memory, so it might not be entirely accurate.) They use cream and milk from the nearby dairy cooperative, and about 3% of that mix is from their own farm.

Not content with this little dairy orgy, of course I had to try a milkshake. It was darn near perfect, not undrinkably thick but not milk-thin, either, with an almost fluffy texture.

Has no one else been here?

ps the location is actually Creswell, not Bel Air.

pps can someone add this to the Dining Guide?