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The improvisational cafe

By PAUL SWIDER
Published February 14, 2007

KENNETH CITY - The "Crazy Lady Ice Cream" sign should be your first clue.

Another sign declaring, "This kitchen is a giant experiment" confirms that Daily Scoop is not your ordinary sweet shop.

"We're not really settled yet," snickers shop owner Gerry Tully, who makes ice cream flavors like Pucker-up Cranberry, Extra-Strong Coffee Mocha, and Pulverized Cookie Dough at the shop on 54th Avenue N at 58th Street. "I don't want to be settled," she says.

Housed in the former Twistee Treat, Daily Scoop still shows signs of the soft-serve stalwart. But Tully has decorated the enclosed patio around the old vanilla cone with grass skirts and Oriental lanterns.

There's a "mermaid crossing" in back. A picture of James Dean leads the way to the men's room, Marilyn Monroe to the ladies.'

Decorations abound, as the place resembles a rummage sale or, as Tully says, an accident.

"We call it a shipwreck cafe," she said as music from the Gilligan's Island theme plays in the background.

In her first business, Tully seems undaunted as she smooths each wrinkle with indefatigable humor.

Improvising along the way, her novel creations have put the zip back into the tired old cone. "We're constantly making stuff up," she said, punctuating every other sentence with a smile or laugh. "The only thing new here is ideas."

Tully started the business with her husband, Tim, who is in the Navy and was deployed to the Middle East. Her retail background includes a 12-year Hawaiian hiatus working in a high-end floral shop. Tully met her husband in Hawaii, and they spent 10 years in Baltimore before moving to Pinellas Park 10 years ago. Along the way, she worked in restaurants and flirted with a number of other careers before deciding she wanted to start her own business.

"I love to entertain, and I love to cook," Tully said, grinning and setting up her punch line. "The thing I didn't realize about the restaurant business is that when you sell stuff, you've got to make more. Every time I turn around, it's all gone."

Open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily since October, Tully is always making more of her homemade pulled pork sandwiches or Hawaiian-style Japanese noodle soup. Wash that down with a swampwater lemonade and iced tea or sorbet spritzer. Then the ice cream. The offerings include an Anchor Sundae: chocolate pound cake, chocolate ice cream, hot fudge and whip cream.

"It'll weigh you down," Tully said.

Or the Go Bananas Sundae with banana bread with banana-pudding ice cream and caramel, replete with a stuffed monkey.

"I just love to say Go Bananas," she said, as one of her teenage staff, called "coneheads," smiles behind her. "It's fun. I want it to be fun."

The only time the smile dims is when Tully talks of her husband overseas. She plans to put out yellow ribbons for his return. She brightens a bit when she offers free ice cream to returning soldiers.

Tully chats with diners and invites them to sample the board games. She offers to demonstrate her "electric chair for hot dogs" and finds a dozen distractions and silly items to chuckle over.

"It's a funny little place," she says while preparing a spaghetti bake. "We're a little bit different over here."

Paul Swider can be reached at 892-2271 or pswider@sptimes.com or by participating in itsyourtimes.com .

[Last modified February 13, 2007, 22:42:32]