Zombie Dinosaurs

This post is long overdue. Earlier this summer, I took my family to Mount St Helens for the weekend, and along the way, we discovered what is almost certainly the most awesome thing in the universe. A restaurant  called The Chicken House and Ice Cream Store.

Why so awesome, you ask? I barely know where to begin. Let me try to cover the most salient points in a numbered list.

1. The place is called The Chicken House and Ice Cream Store. Just let that name roll around in your head for a while. Honestly, can you think of a better name for anything?
2. Look at the logo. It’s a chicken. Holding an ice cream cone. I love everything about this logo. The bright, brain-melting colors. The conceit of a chicken grasping an ice cream cone. The expression on the chicken’s face.  It’s graphic design perfection. (Perhaps The Gap could take a lesson from these folks.)
3. The restaurant itself is apparently a converted Dairy Queen, and they sell all the usual trappings of a fast food joint, only they’ve renamed everything. They make DQ Blizzards, for example, but they’re called Hurricanes.

How does the food taste? I have no idea. We didn’t eat a meal there*. To wonder what the food tastes like is to miss the point. Please refer back to #1: It’s a chicken. Holding an ice cream cone.

*Actually, I am not being completely honest. We did get ice cream. And it was pretty darned good – they stuffed it with a lot more mix-in than I am used to getting at DQ, so I loved my snack.

I love telling people about this place – the logo is my iPhone’s lock screen, and I have whipped it out to emphasize that it’s a chicken holding an  ice cream cone to virtually everyone I’ve met in the last 3 months, from my boss to my various editors to friends, family, and even Kristin Hersh when she was in town for a book signing the other night. The world must know.