Dairy Queen / Orange Julius

Reviewing a Dairy Queen is an odd proposition: do you review it by Dairy Queen standards, in which case you have to compare it to all the other DQ experiences, or do you review it by an absolute standard of DQ versus all other ice creams?
In a sense, reviewing a Dairy Queen is like reviewing a McDonald’s or any other chain place: if someone’s going, «Oh, jeez, what is this ‘Burger King’ place?» they’re probably sufficiently culinarily clueless that they’re not going to BE on Unilocal.
So let’s be honest here: It’s Dairy Queen. If you know what you’re getting, then you either like it or you don’t. By DQ standards, it’s a good four to five stars; it’s clean, the ice cream flows steadily, and the staff is nice.
But if you like ice cream at all —
— well, not to be snobbish. Lord knows I gave it a shot, because it’s the only ice cream store within easy walking distance from my house, and I’d love to have a sundae that I could get merely by walking a half a mile. And I did have some childhood memories of DQ fondness.
So I went the first week it was open, and got myself a nice hot fudge sundae with vanilla ice cream, and lo! Though the fudge was nicely gooey for the brief moment it was hot, the ice cream underneath was a combination of chilled styrofoam and half-​recycled plastic — utterly lacking in flavor. It was cool, and it didn’t melt easily, and that was about what you could say for it.
But hey! Some of you really like the air-​puffed stuff, and if you do, well, it’s going to give you that Dairy Queen experience. It’s also good for the kids, ’cause it’s cheap. If you’re a little pickier, however — and I encourage you to be — then there are several of Cleveland’s delectable custard stands about the neighborhood, many within easy driving distance, and if you’ve got the car check them out.

It’s birthday season in our family so we bought a couple of ice cream cakes from DQ. Great service, even helping us to get one decorated on a Friday night when we were in a bind but they didn’t have a cake decorator working.
I have no idea what the ingredient list is for the ice cream cake and probably prefer not to know, but I was pleasantly surprised that the substantial packaging that protected the round cakes was all #1 plastic which can easily be recycled locally. The sheet cakes were in cardboard that is also simple to recycle around here. Thanks for not making me throw away 3 pounds of plastic!