Photograph by George Sakkestad
Swensen's owner Arash Riazi proudly displays one of his store's bestsellers, a strawberry-banana sundae.
Swensen's hot fudge sundaes the answer for world peace?
By Suzanne Cristallo
The name Swensen's is associated with ice cream, but has anyone ever associated peace talks with chocolate?
The ice cream store in Los Gatos is experiencing a great upsurge of customers who order hot fudge sundaes. Lots of them are visitors from foreign lands, causing owner Arash Riazi to conclude that the common love of chocolate among the peoples of the world could be a common ground for understanding more about each other.
"Chocolate gets them," Riazi marvels, as he jokingly suggests that serving hot fudge in the Middle East might help.
Riazi has been serving hot fudge sundaes since 1998, when he first bought the Swensen's franchise at the corner of W. Main Street and S. Santa Cruz Avenue. As a franchisee, he can do pretty much what he wants with his store--after some head office approval--while enjoying the Swensen's reputation and maintaining certain standards. One of the innovations he has made is a big surprise to his customers: namely, the serving of steak sandwiches and gyros.
There's a spicy chicken steak made from slices of chicken breast that have been marinated in oil, served with sautéed peppers and onions. Two slices of Swiss cheese are placed on top, melting into the hot chicken, and served on a fresh baguette.
"This is one of our most popular items," Riazi says. "Once customers know about it, they keep coming back for it." A beef steak sandwich with Swiss cheese on a baguette is an alternative.
But Swensen's ice cream, made especially for the store, is still what people come "all the way from Fremont" to enjoy, Riazi says. There are 46 flavors, including "Sticky Chewy Chocolate," which gives Iran-born Riazi a chuckle each time he says it.
"It's very rich," he says, but points out that it's only 14 percent fat. There are also several flavors that are 97 percent fat-free and four flavors that do not contain sugar. Additionally, there are four sherbets--including an unusual lemon flavor--and a nondairy orange sorbet.
The pièce de résistance remains the hot fudge sundae. The year-round favorite is five ounces of vanilla ice cream drenched in three ounces of fudge, heated in a special pot and crowned with whipped cream and a cherry. The price--the same for a decade--is still $3.75. It is the centerpiece for the corporate ice cream parties that Riazi caters. He uses a portable freezer containing six kinds of ice cream and four toppings for up to 160 people.
A big hot-weather seller is the waffle cone. What's different about Riazi's cone is the freshness: each cone is made fresh with each order. He places a dollop of dough on an old-fashioned warmer plate, presses a waffle iron into it to brown it, then rolls out the crisp cone. The aroma is irresistible, he says. "People follow their noses here," he chuckles. "It's smelling very nice and is so good when warm with ice cream. People are willing to wait for it."
Riazi learned to speak English in Sweden. For 22 years he and his wife, Fey, lived there and ran four restaurants. He had emigrated there to work in computer science, but after five years the political climate at home in Iran had not changed, and he found himself "stuck," like so many others from his country. Resolving to make the best of it, he bought one restaurant, which eventually grew to four, with a staff of 56 employees serving 200 guests. A favorable marketplace lured him to the United States in 1997; he, Fey, and son, Frazad, now 19 and a student at De Anza College, settled in Campbell. A partner continues to run one of his restaurants in Stockholm for him.
Swensen's Ice Cream of Los Gatos, 20 S. Santa Cruz Ave. in Los Gatos, is open weekdays, 11 a.m.-10 p.m., and weekends, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. For more information, call 408.395.5900.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
