The founder of Old Town Books in Alexandria is starting a new chapter as the owner of a literary-inspired ice cream shop set to open in Fort Hunt next year.
Fabled Ice Cream — a small-batch brand that longtime Fort Hunt resident Ally Kirkpatrick launched last summer — will open at 7940 Fort Hunt Road in the Hollin Hall Shopping Center.
After a year of serving up scoops at pop-events, and a few months of selling pints at Old Town Books for pickup, Kirkpatrick is ready for the brand’s story to include a brick-and-mortar store.
“Being a bookstore owner, I’m surrounded by stories,” she told FFXnow. “I started to just think about ice cream … and how there are so many parallels between characters and flavors … Food can tell a story, just like a good book can.”
The new “classic American scoop shop” will have at least 16 flavors available at a time, Kirkpatrick said. The dairy ingredients will be sourced from grass-fed cows and produced locally. Each flavor is inspired by a story: “Jane Eyre Grey,” for instance, is an Earl Grey tea flavor with lavender and lemon.
“I was imagining … if you sat down to tea time with Jane, this is what it would taste like,” Kirkpatrick said. “So, it’s got that nice bergamot oil tea, black tea flavor, but then also a little bit of brightness from the lemon and … the lavender recalls sort of, like, an English moor.”
“It’s really about the atmosphere of the story, but also just about making a really good ice cream that’s really memorable,” she added.
So far, the business model has worked by regularly rotating flavors. In addition to references to specific books or characters, the flavor names include literary terms such as “cliffhanger,” a salty and sweet peanut butter flavor with chunky dark chocolate-covered pretzels.
“Either you’re a peanut butter person or you’re not. So, it kind of reminded me of that literary device … the people who love it really love it,” Kirkpatrick said.
Next month, she’ll introduce a new flavor, “Hundred Acre Hazelnut,” a Nutella-flavored ice cream base with honey caramel.
Kirkpatrick hopes that the brick-and-mortar ice cream shop will become a part of people’s routines in the neighborhood and surrounding area, from sports teams celebrating after a game to kids biking over on a free afternoon to buy a cone.
Opening a store at a place she’s been coming to since she was a little kid feels a little like a “full circle” moment.
“I live in Fort Hunt, I grew up in Fort Hunt, and now I’m opening an ice cream shop there,” Kirkpatrick said.
