Hot From The Freezer -- Growing Fame For The Best Ice Cream You Never Heard Of

IT'S THE STUFF OF cold, creamy magic, and you have probably already eaten some and rolled your eyes skyward. But who made it?

The super-premium ice creams and sorbets served by many top restaurants around Seattle are largely unknown to the thousands of customers who order them daily.

With very few exceptions you can't buy it in area markets. Its name is seldom uttered, its logo seldom seen. All of that may soon change, however.

Olympic Mountain Ice Cream is a small, family-run creamery on 14 pastoral acres off whimsically named Bambi Farms Road in Shelton, Mason County.

Owners Karl and Beverly Black started their business 14 years ago, struggling to place a high-quality line of ice creams and sorbets in Puget Sound restaurants and hotels.

Today, their client list reads like a Seattle gourmet's wish list. But it wasn't all peaches and cream.

"There were 18-hour days," Karl laughed, "when I'd throw myself down on the ground and pound my fists. Then I'd realize that no one was paying any attention anyway, and I'd get back up and go to work."

The Blacks routinely work long, long hours, six days a week. Beverly makes the ice creams; Karl makes the sorbets. "We work on the flavors - which are all natural - together," Karl said.

Just as routinely, restaurateurs call them at 11 p.m., marvel that they are still awake, still working, and ask if they can have a gallon of Blackberry Bordeaux Sorbet or Chocolate Amaretto Cherry Ribbon Ice Cream delivered in the morning.

"We work hard," Beverly said. "And it can get frustrating. But it's been a great way to raise a family. And it's fun being the `ice cream lady' in the neighborhood, with kids coming over and having samples."

The Blacks have three children. The oldest son, Trail, 20, helps with deliveries; Alana, 16, keeps the books. Joel, 10, just helps out in general.

The Blacks drive their orders into Seattle: maybe to Ray's Boathouse or Palisade, the Westin or the Four Seasons Olympic, Fullers or Anthony's Homeport, Daniel's Broiler or Pescatore. And, of course, Elliott's.

Elliott's, on Pier 56, orders 52 different sorbets a year - changing flavors every week.

You have a sudden craving for Champagne Rum Punch Smokey Lopsang Tea Sorbet? It's available, along with the ever popular Guava Habenero Tequila Sorbet.

Who could forget the Douglas Fir Champagne Sorbet? I can't. I sampled some at an invitational dinner a few years ago alongside Seattle Mayor Norm Rice. But at the time, neither of us knew whose fir boughs had been plucked. It was the Blacks'.

"What next?" my dinner friend had murmured, "a cedar shake?"

"Our ultimate goal," Black said, "is to turn every flavor into an unforgettably rich and intense dessert experience."

It doesn't have to be dessert, exactly. I remember one crack-of-dawn stand-up breakfast in front of the refrigerator, eyes closed, spooning slivers of Pink Grapefruit Sorbet. And another, on May 6 (the date is informative) doing the same with a sorbet of tequila-lime.

Karl and Beverly Black didn't start out as confectioners. They first labored 11 years with a nursery in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains.

"But we thought the work was too hard and the hours too long. Ice cream sounded easier. Ha! We've been working twice as hard ever since."

Karl went back to Penn State to learn ice-cream making. The couple bought rudimentary machines and started making gelato, then switched to making ultra-high-quality products for restaurants. The first was the since-departed Le Tastevin (now Kaspar's) on lower Queen Anne, for chef Jacques Boiroux.

Other chefs took notice.

"When I first went to the Sheraton, I couldn't even get to the purchasing guy," Karl recalled. "But I did get into the Westin. Right after that, the Sheraton called me."

Olympic Mountain has had a recent growth rate that can only be described as phenomenal: 30 percent per quarter for the past 2 1/2 years.

What's all that success founded on? The milk and cream come from the Oregon Coast - Tillamook. The resultant ice cream contains 14 percent butterfat - and almost no air.

A typical gallon of high-quality ice cream will weigh 4 1/2 pounds. Olympic Mountain's weighs 7 to 8 pounds.

"Our stuff is fresh - really fresh," Karl said. "I once was amazed when I noticed that the pull-date on one producer's ice cream was nine months away! Our ice creams and sorbets are delivered and consumed within a day or two. It makes an incredible difference in the taste and texture.

"We don't use any artificial flavors. We cut and hand-squeeze our own juices. We wash and clean and chop and cook our own fruits and vegetables. Last week we made up a rhubarb sorbet, doing our own chopping and draining and straining. We did the same thing for an order of asparagus sorbet. Do you have ANY idea of how impossible it is to strain asparagus?"

Not all of their 216 custom flavors are that esoteric. You can find, for example, vanilla. But you'll also have the choice of Tahitian Vanilla or Madagascar Bourbon.

The Blacks have resisted packaging their products for supermarkets, but realize it is their next business decision.

"Because we would want to do the packaging ourselves. We're a hands-on team. Many other ice-cream makers are really marketers. They get someone to make it, someone else to pack it, someone else to distribute it. And so on. Ours is still all ours."

As a concession to growing demand, Olympic Mountain products are now being sold in pints ($2.75) at Komen's Live Market, 3701 N.E. 45th St., in Laurelhurst. Wholesale costs to restaurants are about $11 a gallon.

Expect further retail expansion. But for the time being, Olympic Mountain resides in freezers in 82 Western Washington restaurants, large and small, obscure and prestigious; from the Happy Teriyaki in Olympia to the Seattle Tennis Club, from Jitterbug to Jazz Alley, from Uncle Roy's to Broadmoor.

In mid-summer, look for their Fresh Peach Sorbet. It contains 70 percent pulverized fresh fruit (most other fruit sorbets are 10 to 20 percent). Said Tamara Wilson of Consolidated Restaurants: "I swear you can almost taste the fuzz."

(Copyright 1996, John Hinterberger. All rights reserved.)

John Hinterberger's restaurant and food columns appear in The Seattle Times in Sunday's Pacific Magazine and Thursday's Tempo. Greg Gilbert is a Times photographer.