You’ve heard of farm-to-table, but have you experienced cow-to-cone?
North Carolina’s Research Triangle is one of the strangest places I’ve ever visited. The cities and towns just sorta run into one another, almost without rhyme or reason, connecting three prominent universities within mere miles of one another: NC State University in Raleigh, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and Duke University in Durham.
While in town for a Friday night football game at Duke, I made a special detour to visit NC State’s Howling Cow Creamery.
Like NC State’s football stadium, the creamery is located off campus, situated on a dairy farm a few miles from the university’s main hub. To help make up for the distance, Howling Cow ice cream is also sold in pints and single-serving sizes at multiple campus locations, so you can still get your fix.
The creamery itself is a beautiful facility. When you first walk in, you’re greeted with refrigerators and freezers filled with take-home offerings of milk, ice cream, and even BBQ sauce. They also have a nice little merch area to peruse as you move forward in line.
Then there’s the show-stopper: the ice cream counter.
Howling Cow offers ice cream in almost any form you can imagine — cups, cones, sundaes, splits, sandwiches, milkshakes, and even ice cream nachos. Yes, you read that correctly: ICE. CREAM. NACHOS. The “nachos” are waffle cone chips covered with ice cream, toppings, and a sauce of your choice.
The creamery has 15 different flavors to choose from, including the NC State-themed Wolf Tracks and Tuffy’s Toffee. It also offers a variety of beverages to warm you back up from the cold ice cream, including espresso, coffee, and hot chocolate.
One thing that stood out about the Howling Cow ice cream is that they appear to have discovered the perfect holding temperature. The ice cream is neither over-frozen to where it needs to rest before diving in, nor does it melt as soon as you walk outside. As a result, it’s served perfectly smooth and creamy from the very first bite.
Since the creamery is located on an active dairy farm, you get to see the cows who produce the milk and ice cream up close. A covered patio area with rocking chairs only adds to the relaxed cow-to-cone motif.
The creamery also offers pre-booked tours of the dairy production as part of the Dairy Heritage Museum located on site, plus video feeds of the plant in operation if a full-scale tour isn’t your thing.
Overall, this place is spectacular. If they have the capacity and resources, I’d love to see some cheese experimentation in the future in addition to the current milk and ice cream options, but any place where I can sit in an Adirondack-style rocking chair while eating delicious ice cream and overlooking an operational dairy farm gets two thumbs up from me.
If you’re ever in the Raleigh-Durham area, the Howling Cow Dairy Education Center and Creamery is a must-stop.
CFB Travel Guy 