In the five years since she’s owned the shop, PK Ross has made quite a few changes to Splendora’s—most notably by adding a whole host of flavors to the repertoire. We caught up with her ahead of Splendy’s fifth birthday (June 24!) to chat about some of the biggest gaffes, greatest successes and what’s up next for the Downtown Mall gelateria.
Personal favorite flavor: “Chocolate or chocolate/strawberry/vanilla.”
Customers’ favorite flavor: “In terms of volume, chocolate. The industry standard is for vanilla to be most popular, so that’s pretty nifty for us. In terms of most vocal fans, the pistachio or the salted caramel. But we make chocolate, cookies and cream, raspberry sorbet and mango sorbet the most often.”
Most creative flavor: “I was mucking about with cheese flavors. Goat Cheese Honey Fig is super popular and a lot of people really responded to Gorgonzola dolce with wine-poached pears. Surprised the hell out of me that it sold. The herb things I do seem to take people aback, like rose geranium black pepper.”
Disaster flavor: “Sriracha peanut butter. Funny thing about the Sriracha is the longer it was exposed to the air, the hotter and more garlicky it became. There was no hope for it. I could try again by roasting peanuts in Sriracha, but I’m not sure.”
Favorite summer ingredient: “Peaches. I did not know peaches came from trees until college, so they’re a little magical to me.”
New flavors on the horizon: “I’ve been knocking around some beer combinations with South Street [Brewery] and other breweries. Someone told me about the scorpion pepper-infused honey they had at Lampo, so I want to do some honey infusions.”
Where do you get your inspiration? “Eating, and other people telling me things. Mostly the things I eat and drink around town strike a chord. Or people will have been excited by a flavor they had elsewhere and will tell me about it. The chili mango was from a martini at Zocalo, and my sister was the one who told me to make a goat cheese flavor. I used to sit at Commonwealth [Restaurant & Skybar] and chat with Nick Crutchfield; he was a great guy to talk shop with because he ate a lot of gelato and had flavor profiles in his head from mixology. And vendors! Smelling all the jars at The Spice Diva is rad, and Michael [Clark] from Planet Earth Diversified always gives me great herb and pepper ideas at the City Market.”
Local ingredient source: “The City Market—Hungry Hill Honey, Agriberry, Planet Earth Diversified, Caromont Farm. Also Chiles Peach Orchard and Henley Orchard. And I’ll probably extend the list to breweries since my beerlato guinea pigs have seemed to enjoy the flavors I’ve trialed so far.”
