Marshmallow? Caramel? Chocolate? It's pretty hard to do wrong with a line up like that and it seems such is the case as Ben and Jerry's Phish Food has been on the line up of Ben & Jerry's ice creams for quite some time now. Usually I try to eat my ice cream directly out of the freezer as frozen and possible. For some strange odd reason the day I ate this pint I had waited a good 4 or 5 minutes. This time that I had let passed actually increased the overall rating of this flavor and ill explain why.
Upon my first bite and as you can see from the pictures allowing the ice cream to soften up had actually created almost a melting pot for the before mentioned components. The marshmallow had infused with the caramel and chocolate to create a crazy good experience. The result was a thick rich bite In almost every spoon full. The texture of the marshmallow boosted this flavor exponentially and the backlash of carmel was amazing.
With the ice cream semi melted it lost its super hard consistency but that wasn't a bad thing in the slightest. There is another aspect to this flavor in the form of little fudge fish that are firm upon first bite and soft upon chewing. These little fudge fish typically would be a overlooked add in to me but considering what is going on in this pool of flavors it's almost a flawless pairing.
If you look carefully you can see the dark caramel infused with the chocolate. This pint was swirled with this stuff like you wouldn't believe.. layer upon layer. I almost want to give this flavor an A but considering I think I got an otherworldly pint I'm not sure if every container would be as good as this one was.
Ryan's Grade: B
After being blown away by the bigger badder calorie enhanced original version of Phish Food I was expecting a similar yet toned down experience with the Froyo version. It's easy to say that nothing much has changed except the base of course. This base instead is frozen yogurt as opposed to the typical recipe used by Ben and Jerry. My first experience with the original left me awestruck by the amount of marshmallow and caramel swirl. As with most pints some are amazing some are good and others are lackluster. I would say this one falls in the middle at "good".
Marshmallow peaks out of the chocolate but as you can clearly tell just by the visuals it's a lighter option. My first bite had a good amount of marshmallow swirl but seriously lacked the caramel. Unfortunately after having the "real deal" I've been spoiled. I keep this in mind as I continue to swim around the container. The chocolate base is lighter, a little more icier but still tasty. I would say that the base of the ice cream really didn't matter to me all that much due to the fact I'm not the biggest fan of Ben and Jerrys chocolate recipe in the first place. What I'm really looking for is the overall trio of swirls and fish pieces and while the swirls are the same they just aren't as plentiful as the full fledged version.
This pint still comes in at 240 cal per serving and is the highest among all the froyo line. Unless you are using this to adjust to a specific low fat diet I would stick with the more dense original recipe phish food. Although this was still good it just can't compete.
Ryan's Grade: C