There were lots of fun nuggets that came out of the Vogue exclusive on Naomi Biden’s wedding, which took place at the White House almost two weeks ago: Naomi is a Sancerre girl, she and Jill Biden go to the Georgetown SoulCycle together, and Hunter Biden’s favorite food is chicken pot pie. (Which begs the question…has Hunter ever eaten a microwaveable Marie Callender’s pot pie?)
But there’s one little detail we can’t stop mulling, almost a week-and-a-half later: President Joe Biden’s favorite ice cream is…Graeter’s chocolate chip.
Now this is hardly a knock against Graeter’s, a Cincinnati-based ice cream brand that’s been around for about 150 years. On the contrary: Your author, who also moonlights as an ice cream wonk and has personally undertaken it as her life’s mission to sample every kind available, considers Graeter’s her go-to brand. But chocolate chip? Mr. President, you’ve missed the mark. You’re overlooking perhaps the best Graeter’s flavor—or ice cream flavor, period—known to mankind: black raspberry/chocolate chip.
Before you ask, no, I am not a Graeter’s influencer, and no, I am not from Cincinnati. I’ve only been to Ohio like, five times! And one of those times was for high-school nerd camp, where a gaggle of horny, dorky teenagers were too busy trying to make out with each other in between dissecting William Carlos Williams poems to even remember that ice cream existed!
But the black raspberry/chocolate chip flavor, which is available in national grocery stores, is so good—the tart, creamy base flavor of the black raspberry ice cream is broken up by sweet slivers of chocolate chip—that I, but a simple ice cream lover, feel compelled to ask our president to reconsider.
Although Biden and I do have one thing in common on this front: We have both failed to visit the Graeter’s ice cream shop when we’ve traveled to Cincinnati. I’ve been to the Ohio city twice, and have never had enough time to make it there. It’s one of my life’s biggest regrets (perhaps second only to the time in middle school when I tried to get bangs that looked like Mischa Barton’s on The OC, and ended up looking instead like a member of A Flock of Seagulls).
So, in a patriotic show of giving back to my nation, I’m not going to ask what my country can do for me. Instead, it’s what I can do for my country, and that is this: request that President Biden at least gives black raspberry/chocolate chip a try. And you know what? If he doesn’t like it, I hear there’s crème fraîche ice cream on hand in the White House.
Mimi Montgomery joined Washingtonian in 2018. She’s written for The Washington Post, Garden & Gun, Outside Magazine, Washington City Paper, DCist, and PoPVille. Originally from North Carolina, she now lives in Del Ray.
