Ben & Jerry's Chunk Fest

Ben & Jerry's Chunk Fest was the talk of the town this weekend, not only in the newspapers and some of the magazines, but also online in blogs, in websites, on radio programs and in brochures and leaflets as well. With so much hype, naturally you expect that something big and happening is going to take place at Fort Canning Green, and you can imagine how much I was looking forward to savouring at least two of the new flavours on offer, like the "peanut butter cookie dough", "triple caramel chunk", "butter pecan", "chocolate peanut butter swirl" and "vanilla chocolate chunk". It's a chunk fest, you've got to eat it to experience it.


And then when our camera and eyes shifted away from the pretty signs and posters, we saw such a mass of people that we started wondering if we made the right decision to come at all. We passed a couple of our friends on our way to the fest, friends who just came from the event, and all of them warned us about the long queues and maddening crowd.


There was no crowd control in sight, so I suppose the "peace" symbol could double as a reminder to everyone that this is supposedly a happy event and no one should fight or get into quarrels over ice-cream.


I have to say Ben & Jerry's was terribly let down by the rain in the afternoon, making the grounds all wet and muddy. The spacious field was avoided by most, treaded carefully through by many, and only a few set up mats to wait for the next activity to start on the large stage erected. For the whole hour that me and Daphne were there though, nothing interesting happened. We were just people-watching, if not, gawking at the long queue and wishing there was a familiar face in the line.



We could hear the groans of quite a number of people who realised that the queue for the ice-creams was amazingly long, not forgetting that each person in the queue was probably ordering for a group of friends of at least six. I think Ben & Jerry's got it all wrong by having only a single queue and counter for the much awaited ice-creams, and you can hear as many pissed voices (think of the look on the girl's face on the first of the two pictures above) as triumphant cheers from those who braved and lasted through the queue and got their ice-creams.


We noticed that the queue for sorbets and smoothies was very short though (all sinners for fatty ice-cream at Fort Canning then) and since we were at Ben & Jerry's event anyway, we might as well get something from Ben & Jerry's right?


We got the sorbet from one of the little carriage-like stalls along the pathways. They were also selling Ben & Jerry's merchandise, as well as hotdogs and beer. One of the Caucasians selling the beer was shouting for people to "forget ice-cream, have some beer!" Come to think of it, I wish Ben & Jerry's could come up with their own flavour of ice-cream that includes Bailey's Irish Cream. That would be heavenly.


And so here you go! A scoop of "Mango Mango" and another scoop of "Strawberry Kiwi". We came all the way here eating something we could easily get at other outlets! Oh, talking of which, you can click here for the online "scoop shop" (cute application!) to see what flavours they have at the usual Ben & Jerry's, if you're not already familiar with them. I'm not a fan of sorbets at all, so I left it to the girlfriend to enjoy it herself.

Soon, I'll make a trip to my favourite Ben & Jerry's scooper and get my lovely Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Chocolate Therapy. Camyy Tan, that scooper is you! Sorry I couldn't get a pint or something for you from the event, I couldn't even snatch a taste of the special new flavours for myself. Hopefully some of it will find their way to the scooper shops.

If you're thinking of heading to a Ben & Jerry's outlets soon, there's one at Raffles City (where Camyy is at!), The Cathay, Dempsey Road, Vivocity and Great World City.

If you want to read a review on Ben & Jerry's, click here for a short (and probably biased) post on the Dempsey outlet.

Take care, and happy eating ice-cream! =)