photo courtesy of Clementine’s Naughty & Nice Ice Cream
CORRECTION: April 10 is NOT National Ice Cream Day. Apologies for that misstatement.
In early March, The Washington Post published an article by book critic Ron Charles highlighting several new ice cream flavors inspired by The Great Gatsby which were created by St. Louis-based Tamara Keefe, proprietor of Clementine’s Naughty & Nice Ice Cream. Keefe, who has multiple Clementine’s locations throughout the area, including one at 308 N. Euclid, is a big fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s enduring novel.
April 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby And so, on Thursday, April 10, Clementine’s will host a celebration starting at 6 p.m. There will be 1920’s jazz, screenings of the movie adaptation of the novel, book giveaways, a DIY bookmark station and, of course, delicious ice cream in four Great Gatsby flavors, cleverly described by Keefe in Ron Charles article reprinted below:
“It eluded us then, but that’s no matter.” Next month marks the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” There will be scholarly reflections and special editions of the classic novel, but let’s begin with the most important tribute possible. Clementine’s Naughty & Nice Ice Cream, in the greater St. Louis area, has just released a jazzy quartet of commemorative flavors:
“I loved the book,” Clementine’s CEO Tamara Keefe tells me once I get through telling her how much I adore her ice cream. “I just really thought about the characters. What would an ice cream flavor for Jay Gatsby be like? What would that taste like?” If English class had included assignments like that, I would have paid more attention. Listening to how Keefe approached the themes and motifs in “The Great Gatsby” was mouthwatering. “So, Green Light,” she muses, “it’s this beautiful pale green chamomile tea ice cream, and since chamomile is a member of the daisy family, if you’ll remember, we thought we should add this hibiscus sweet jam.” As Nick warns, “You can’t repeat the past.” And indeed, some ice cream fantasies suggested by the 100-year-old novel eluded Keefe. “We tried a crushed macaron flavor to honor Tom and Daisy’s time in Paris,” she says, “but we couldn’t get the macarons to hold up inside the ice cream.” Sorry, old sport. “Old Sport — that was probably our most challenging flavor to come up with because we wanted to find a way that would really represent Gatsby with his own flavor. What would it smell like to sit with him, probably smoking a cigar, right? We wanted to make sure that the flavor was approachable and sweet, but with that savory, smoky tobacco scent with an offset of a little bit of butterscotch because I just imagined that he would have had butterscotch candies.” But what about that fourth flavor, Gold-Hatted Lovers? That name alludes to the poetic epigraph by Thomas Parke D’Invilliers on the title page of “The Great Gatsby.” It reads, in part: “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover.” But there was no such poet; Thomas Parke D’Invilliers is a character in Fitzgerald’s first novel “This Side of Paradise.” The epigraph in “Gatsby” is a sly simulacrum. Appropriately, the Gold-Hatted Lovers ice cream is a nondairy flavor — ice cream but not. “It’s really about the passion behind the lovers,” Keefe says. “So, the turmeric with the candied cacao nibs is sophisticated and dazzling.” Look for Clementine’s Great Gatsby flavors while supplies last. “Hopefully through the end of the quarter,” Keefe says. Like Tom Buchanan’s polo ponies, Clementine’s ice cream can be shipped anywhere. So we eat on. ❖ |
Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of The Great Gatsby at Clementine’s, 308 N. Euclid, starting at 6 p.m. on April 10. This will also be the last day The Great Gatsby flavors will be available. They have been extremely popular and are in short supply.