Olaf Growald
If you think all Italian ices are created the same, you obviously haven’t met Douglas Cappleman and his wife Kristine Tonkin — and clearly, you haven’t visited their West Side Italian ice trailer, Pop-Pop Feducchi’s Italian Ice and Ice Cream.
Not only will they serve you an outstanding Italian ice, in flavors both traditional and unique, ranging from cherry to Mangonada Magic, they’ll offer you a lesson in the differences between their Italian ices and everybody else’s.
Theirs, they say, is Philly-style. It differs from those you can get at chain Italian shops in that theirs are made from all-natural ingredients.
“A Philadelphia-style Italian ice is made with three ingredients: fruit, sugar, and water, and that’s it,” says Tonkin. “Some places, instead of using real fruit, they’ll use syrup. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not how we make them. It’s not the Italian ices I grew up on.”
Olaf Growald
Makes sense the couple would gravitate toward this style of Italian ices — Tonkin is, after all, a Philly expat. As a kid, she fell in love with Italian ices in the same way that many of us Texans fell in love with sno-cones, a close relative of the Italian ice. Summer nights, a cold treat, surrounded by friends and family — these are the memories and experiences that inspired her to, after years of dreaming and planning, open the trailer this past summer; it’s parked at the Rivercrest Service Center on Camp Bowie.
While Italian ices aren’t as prevalent locally as sno-cones, they’re becoming more well-known, thanks to the arrival of Rita’s Italian Ice, a chain with locations in Arlington and the mid-cities.
Italian ices differ greatly from sno-cones in two significant ways: the texture of the ice and how they’re flavored.
“The texture of the ice for an Italian ice is fluffy and soft,” Cappleman says. “The texture is way smoother than a sno-cone. There’s special equipment you need to make Italian ices if you want to do them right.”
In putting together their Italian ice trailer, they traveled to Indiana to purchase an authentic Italian ice machine.
All-natural ingredients, the couple says, give Italian ices their distinct flavor, setting them apart from sno-cones and other cold and frozen treats.
“It’s both the ice and what’s mixed into the ice,” Tonkin says. “We use fresh fruit for all of our ices. You can see and taste and feel little chunks of it in every bite.”
West-Siders have been lining up ever since the couple launched the trailer in July. But that’s not just because of their Italian ices. They also serve — and make themselves — Philly-style ice cream.
Philadelphia-style ice cream, Tonkin says, is ice cream made without eggs, as opposed to the more common French-style ice cream, which uses a custard base.
“Not having any eggs in the base makes it lighter and creamier,” Tonkin says. “It doesn’t weigh on you as heavily.”
Their ice cream flavors are craft inspired: banana pudding, Orange Cloud Cream, Darker Chocolate, and pandan. Again, instead of artificial flavorings, they use real ingredients, from chopped up bits of chocolate, crumbled cookies, and for Checkmate, their must-get ice cream flavor, real pieces of chess pie.
Olaf Growald
Admittedly, they say, it’s a lot of work. “There are a lot of shortcuts we could take, that’s for sure,” Cappleman says. “Part of the fun of doing this is the work involved and then seeing the results of that work, seeing people say, ‘This is great’ or seeing the same people come back over and over, making their way through the menu.”
Tonkin says the trailer’s name was inspired by her family. One of her grandfathers was from Italy, and he nicknamed her “Feducchi.”
“He nicknamed all of us Feducchi,” she says, laughing. “That’s just what he called all the kids. I was Feducchi, my sister was Feducchi.”
And “pop pop,” she says, was a common nickname given to grandfathers in Philly. “I called both of my grandfathers ‘pop pop.’ When I first started dreaming about doing this, I knew I wanted to pay tribute to them, so this is me honoring them, remembering them.”
Currently, Pop-Pop’s is only open weekend evenings. The two still have day jobs — careers in the transportation industry, actually, that they’ve invested their lives in. He’s a local truck driver; she works as a merchant and channel partner manager.
Unlike some people who get the restaurant bug and jettison their careers to pursue a life of food, Tonkin and Cappleman are moving slowly, seeing how things unfold, taking this one step at a time, they say.
Instead of a brick-and-mortar, the two are dreaming about opening another, far less headache-inducing venture: a commercial kitchen.
“That, right now, is the ultimate goal for us, to have some more space,” Tonkin says, laughing. “Have you worked in a food truck? Have you ever tried to make things from scratch in a food truck? There’s not a lot of space. So, what we’d really love is a big commercial kitchen where we’d have some storage, some room to move around and cook — and then have a walk-up window for customers.
“I don’t think I’d ever want to give up our trailer, to be honest,” she says. “It’s been such a dream to get it that I don’t think I’d ever want to lose it.”
Pop-Pop Feducchi’s Italian Ice and Ice Cream, 4621 Camp Bowie Blvd., instagram.com/poppopfeducchis
