Scara’s New York Gourmet Italian Ices opening branch in north Fort Worth

by Teresa Gubbins

This is the first branch in Texas, and the first branch outside of New Jersey.

FORT WORTH — Scara's New York Gourmet Italian Ices, a small Italian-ice chain based in New Jersey, will open a branch in north Fort Worth in the next couple of weeks. Yay!

Scara's opened its first retail store in New Jersey in 1995; it currently has four branches in New Jersey, but wholesales its products up and down the East Coast, and is also sold at amusement parks, stadiums, water parks, and other venues across the country.

The Fort Worth branch comes from Jason Maenza, whose main job is working for American Airlines.

"It's something me and my wife wanted to do for a while, and we finally stuck our neck out there," he says. "The main reason is that there was nothing out here. When I first moved down here, all you could find similar to this was snow cones. To me, a snow cone compared to an Italian ice is like a hamburger compared to a filet mignon."

While the ingredients between the two products are similar -- i.e. water and flavoring -- the process is different in that shaved ice is simply ice shaved and topped with syrup, while Scara's Italian ice is made using the same batch machine used to make ice cream, which creates a firmer, creamier texture.

Scara's makes two kinds of ices: "fruit ices" which are water-based and "cream ices" which have a little cream mixed in. Fruit ice flavors include Black Raspberry, Blue Raspberry, Granny Apple, Lemon, Mango, Orange, Pineapple, Cherry, and Watermelon, plus specialty flavors such as Rainbow, Bubble Gum, and Cotton Candy. Cream ice flavors include Amaretto, Chocolate, Chocolate-Chocolate Chip, Coconut, Vanilla, Creamcicle, Pina Colada, Peaches N' Cream, and Vanilla Chip.

Maenza will stock about 16 cream ice flavors every day, and about a dozen fruit ices; he'll also sell ice cream from Henry's in Plano.

Scara's is opening in a new strip center in an area that's seeing a lot of growth, off of North Tarrant Parkway, where it'll be neighbors with a nail salon, coffee shop, Italian restaurant, shoe store, and a Japanese restaurant -- all of your basic needs.