Barstool’s el presidente, Dave Portnoy, is about the last person I would ever guess to be a spokesperson for BYU, but his reviews of various Provo spots hit an elevated level on Friday when he stopped by the Creamery on Ninth, BYU’s famous ice cream parlor. The place earns high marks from locals, but now, it has garnered the praise of a tough critic.
Portnoy, who is in town for Fox’s “Big Noon Kickoff” show, which airs live on Saturday morning here, regularly checks out pizza joints, rating their pies according to crust, flavor and overall essence, as well as college bookstores, was told by folks in BYU’s bookstore to hit the Creamery.
By the way, he rated the bookstore highly, as well, despite its lack of convenient parking and difficulty to locate.
“They have everything,” he said into a camera, as a crowd gathered around, touting the size of the store, the homemade fudge, the chocolate-covered cinnamon bears. “I’ve definitely never had this,” he said, wearing a furry Cougar head on his dome.
“If Utah’s bookstore is a 9.2, this has got to be close to a 9.6. [Cheers erupt in the background.] I’m just calling it as I see it.”
He did so at the Creamery, too, decked out in the same BYU gear — a nice shirt, a spectacular jacket, and a traditional white hat with a blue Y logo on it. He described the crowded environment at the place as “a mob scene.”
Although the store failed to have his favorite ice cream flavor — straight chocolate chip — it did offer him a cone with cookies and cream atop it. (Regulars at the Creamery said he should have gone with the Graham Canyon flavor, which supposedly is off the charts.)
Either way, Portnoy tried what he got and immediately pronounced it to be “great ice cream. … And I’m an ice cream guy.”
“This is what we’re learning,” he said. “They can’t swear — Mormons, that is — they can’t drink, no coffee, but they’ll go in on the sweets and the candy like you read about.”
Obviously, anyone who knows Latter-day Saints is fully aware that many of them do, in fact, use intemperate language. Some of them swear like sailors. Portnoy should golf with a few followers of the faith and he’ll discover that in #@%&@! short order.
He ate the ice cream and continued: “I don’t want to keep giving out monster scores, but this is spectacular ice cream. No wonder there’s a line around the corner. … 9.4 ice cream? This is great ice cream. … Best campus ice cream I’ve ever had.”
“Provo’s doing it for me,” he said.
Then Portnoy uttered one of the best quotes ever spoken about both the LDS culture and also the culture at BYU. He scratched his belly and said: “I don’t need to drink, I’ll eat.”