Is Prince Puckler’s in Eugene Worth the Praise?

As someone who has attended the University of Oregon for almost a year, I usually get strange looks when I tell people I’ve never been to Prince Puckler’s. After all, the gourmet ice cream and coffee shop has quite the reputation around town; one of the first things seen when walking in is pictures of Barack Obama hanging on the wall eating the famous ice cream. If the president himself had eaten there before, it just seemed wrong for someone who lives in Eugene to have never even tried it. So, earlier this week, I set out with a couple friends, determined to see if the place was actually worthy all of the praise.

Photo by Inness Cheng

The atmosphere of the store was pleasant, albeit incredibly similar to most ice cream shops. After taking a look at the flavor selection it becomes a little harder to shrug the shop off as another generic ice cream parlor. While carrying all the traditional ice cream flavors, Prince Puckler’s also has some slightly more adventurous offerings such as fresh banana and bittersweet nugget, but the flavor that jumped out the most was green tea. The flavor seemed particularly strange to me, and not even the cartoon picture of Barack Obama next to it declaring it to be his favorite was enough to get me to order it.

Prince Puckler’s atmosphere is comfortable and casual, Photo by Inness Cheng

After spending far too much time figuring out which flavor to settle on, I decided to order a scoop of Mexican mocha and a scoop of French crunch in a sugar cone. The scoops were huge and by the time I sat down, I already had ice cream all over my hands. I typically like to live by the motto of the more food the better, so this was definitely a plus. But of course the most important question is: how is the ice cream? Prince Puckler’s is good, although somewhat unremarkable. I enjoyed my ice cream as well as my samplings of all the flavors my friends ordered, other than the one friend who ordered lime-flavored sherbet rather than ice cream (Who does that?). But none resulted in the mouth numbing, flavor-exploding taste that the hype had led me to expect. I definitely plan on coming back in the near future, and would recommend you to do the same, however if I was President Obama and was one quick flight away from any ice cream parlor in the world, it would probably be a while before I returned to Prince Puckler’s.