The hardest job I’ve ever had was making ice cream at Humphry Slocombe.
This was 2010, a different era of San Francisco culinary culture, when food trucks felt exciting and bacon was a novelty ingredient to be piled onto anything and everything. Along with Blue Bottle Coffee and Almanac Beer, Humphry Slocombe was part of a crop of indie businesses with an anti-establishment ethos, one of those must-try, food-blog-blessed places that helped San Francisco hoist itself out of the rubble of the Great Recession, one scoop of Government Cheese ice cream at a time.
At the peak of its popularity, when I worked there, it was drawing hour-long lines to the corner of 24th and Harrison streets. On the strength of wacky flavors like Rosemary’s Baby, Boccalone prosciutto, and the eternal best-seller, a bourbon-and-toasted-corn-flakes combo known as Secret Breakfast, the weird, hipster ice cream shop with the two-headed calf mascot became a national sensation seemingly overnight. Founder Jake Godby even earned a profile in The New York Times Magazine.
Humphry Slocombe’s 2010s peers have mostly vanished or gone corporate, and the company has expanded to nine other scoop shops around the Bay. But the original location, where I worked, will close Oct. 30, Mission Local has reported.
During that long-ago summer, I was one of two employees making ice cream for $12.50 an hour plus half a share of tips. It was a wet, grueling slog. Ironically, freezers and fridges generate staggering amounts of heat, so it was a hot slog, too. It was my only back-of-house gig during a decade-plus run in the food and beverage industries, and I scorched enough caramels to confirm that I have no future as a pastry chef.
Owing to the alchemy between water and fat, ice cream is more challenging to make than you might think. A high-speed machine spins a liquid base into an emulsion, but if you leave it in for too long, fat globules accumulate, resulting in an unpleasant film on the roof of the mouth. The formula magically becomes ice cream only after spending the night in a “blast freezer” set to a very low temperature.
Putting aside the time that someone — almost certainly me — left the blast freezer door ajar, nothing in my professional life has compared to the angst of watching vats of Candy Cap (maple-flavored mushroom) or Jesus Juice (Coke and red wine) come out of the walk-in faster than I could put fresh ones in. The store opened daily with 12 flavors, and on busy nights, we were lucky to finish with six or seven. When the display case fell below five, we closed.
On hot days, lines became ridiculous and unruly, with customers growing cranky at how slowly it moved, only to become paralyzed with indecision once it was their turn to order. The overworked staff, listening to Cut Copy and Grizzly Bear on eternal repeat, secretly hoped everyone ordered Secret Breakfast. It was softer than the other flavors — and, therefore, easier on the scooper’s wrist — because the bourbon never froze. Sometimes, the bourbon was Jack Daniel’s, as advertised; other times, it was a lesser label from the corner store, like Rebel Yell.
Virtually everything has a social media schtick now, but Humphry Slocombe’s highbrow-lowbrow attitude was ahead of its time. Godby trained at heavy-hitting restaurants like Boulevard, Coi, and Zuni Cafe, while cofounder Sean Vahey amassed tens of thousands of Twitter followers by running sassy promotions like offering a free scoop to anyone who said, “I want to lick it.”
Together, they made an indelible mark on San Francisco’s burgeoning food culture. The whole thing grew so big that there was even a parody account called Jasper Slobrushe (tagline: “Edgy fucking ice cream, bitches!”) that tweeted out almost-believable flavors like Zebra Chorizo Pancake and Hay. My coworkers assumed I was behind it. I wasn’t, but after I left Humphry Slocombe, I got my first real journalism job, so no one believed me.
All the hype over Humphry Slocombe has long since petered out, as hot new places like Salt & Straw and Garden Creamery came in to steal the novelty ice cream thunder. I stopped by the original Humphry Slocombe shop during this month’s heat wave and found holes in the walls and a depressing atmosphere. The sundaes named for Ramones lyrics were gone. So were the wall-mounted parodies of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans in “Fetal Kitten” flavor, Godby’s stock reply whenever someone asked him what weird ice cream variety he was working on next.
I tried Secret Breakfast again for the first time in years, and the bite of bottom-shelf bourbon was weirdly comforting. There was a time when only I and a few others knew the secret: No matter what brand of booze went in, everybody wanted to lick it.