Location: Banff, AB – 134 Banff Ave http://www.cows.ca/
Season: Open year round
Seating: None, but there are benches outside
Special Diet Options: None
Ice Cream: “Super premium” ice cream made in PEI
Other Frozen Treats: None, but there are snacks like cookies and powdered hot chocolate for sale.
When we’re in Banff – especially during the summer months – we always stop at Cows for ice cream. I came to this store as a kid, so I have a nostalgic fondness for it.
But it’s delicious, and they have a cute store full of cow merchandise. Their most popular items are t-shirts with cow-related puns.
Their ice cream is fantastic. It’s made in PEI, with cream that has a very high butterfat (ie: deliciousness) content. It’s mixed slowly so that it has very little air, which results in a very dense, creamy ice cream.
All of the Cows ice cream includes fresh cream, eggs, and sugar. However, each flavor has its own carefully chosen ingredients. For instance, their strawberry ice cream is made from PEI berries.
They have a banner up in the store advertising the fact that their ice cream was chosen as the best in the world by a tourism company. This was back in 2008, but it’s legit.
If you visit Cows in the winter like we did, you’ll probably end up wandering around the store while you eat your ice cream because it’s freezing outside.
This seemed to be fine with the staff even though I had toddlers holding cones. It was also okay with my kids – they had fun checking out the giant cow and laughing at the punny t-shirts.
