New owners of Old Town Creamery in Plano expand unique ethnic flavors

by Teresa Gubbins

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Thai tea, butterscotch, and kiwi-strawberry.

PLANO — Old Town Creamery, one of the few independently-owned traditional ice cream places in the Dallas area, has changed hands, and the new owners are placing a greater emphasis on their unique ethnic flavors.

Old Town was previously on Greenville Avenue in Dallas, but closed in 2004. A new set of owners bought the equipment and opened this Plano location at Coit and Spring Creek.

Then Ayesha and Hussain Kedwaii bought the place last year.

"The previous owners got tired," says Hussain. "We were customers. This is something my wife and I are doing together."

One of their first changes was to switch the strategy regarding the unique Indian flavors such as cashew-raisin, saffron, almond-date, and fig. Instead of keeping them hidden behind the counter as the previous owners did, they're now prominently displayed.

They've also added new flavors including Thai tea, butterscotch, and pomegranate-acai. "Also kulfi, but what we make is not like the kulfi you get on a stick anywhere else," Hussain says. He made a kiwi-and-strawberry ice cream that "everybody loves," he says, as well as an old-school flavor called tutti frutti. "Nobody else makes that flavor, but I'm still working on it," he says. "I'd like to do it the way we used to do it back home with more dried fruits and some fruit. But all the recipes here have cherries and pineapple and banana and strawberry."

Shelf space means that they have to limit their total number of flavors to about 36. As a result, they've had to stop offering some of the flavors they used to make, including chocolate-peanut butter.

"We are still learning what the right formula is," says Hussain. "We're looking at Amy's in Austin, who have 14 or so standard flavors. We'll have one freezer of standard flavors and the others we'll keep rotating."

Shannon Sutlief contributed to this story.

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