Cool Moon Ice Cream

Where are you located?

Cool Moon Ice Cream’s location is: 1105 NW Johnson Street, 97209, in Portland, OR. Here is a link to our "Location" page.

Are you locally owned?

YES! Cool Moon is owned and operated by Eva Bernhard. Eva was raised in Eugene and is a long-time Portland resident. Cool Moon’s roots go back to our family tradition of summer evenings making homemade ice cream, with everything from Indonesian vanilla from our grandparents’ travels, to blackberries picked in the backyard, all cranked by hand in the classic wood barreled White Mountain freezer.

When are you opening?

We will open in mid to late October 2007. Please check back, our "Home Page" will list the most recent details.

What are your hours?

We will be tinkering with this a bit to ensure we are open when you need us! It will be your normal 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM with variations as we feel our way along.

About our “Pre-Construction” Events and Installations

Tell me more about the skywriting I saw over Portland.

Please follow this link to our "Events" page for more details (and pictures!) of this magical occurrence!

How much did the skywriting cost?

We do not know how much the skywriting cost as it was a gift from Eva's brother. He is almost “saint-like” in his kindness towards Eva. Why he continues to do this in the face of Eva’s surely temper is beyond him.

Why are you staging installations in your space?

Just because we are working on design and getting our building permits doesn’t mean the Cool Moon location should sit empty. We are excited about the space and want to share its “fun potential” with the neighborhood (plus we had a bored teenager around the house and wanted, to quote her, to “turn her into a slave.”)

About our Products

Will you be making your own ice cream?

YES!!!!! All of our products are made by hand right in our store.

What kind of ice cream will it be?

The short answer is “very good.” The longer answer is rich, tasty, homemade style, with real, natural, Oregon ingredients and flavors.

What flavors will you be making?

A mix of the best of the old-time favorites, and some new and fun flavors. When berries, cherries, peaches and other fruits are ripe, they are definitely going to find their way into our ice cream freezer. Some of the traditional favorites we will be sure to carry are a variety of chocolates, vanillas and coffees, plus butter pecan, banana, chocolate chip, mint chip, caramel swirl, vanilla fudge swirl, and cherry vanilla. Unusual flavors could include avocado, candied ginger, Black cherry with chocolate and pine nuts, Campari grapefruit sorbet, and many others. Possibilities are only limited by imagination! Share yours with us, we might just make it. Stay tuned for Cool Moon ice cream flavor and naming invitationals!

Will your ice cream be all natural?

YES! Our ice creams, sorbets, and the ingredients that go into making them will contain all-natural ingredients. Warning: our mint chip, flavored with Oregon mint, will be mint-o-licious, but it won’t be green!

Will your ice cream be organic?

No. At this point it’s difficult to find certified organic products for all the ingredients we need. The basic test used is “would we feed it to our daughter?”

What kind of dairy products do you use?

The dairy portion of the ice cream base is custom mixed for us right on site where the cows are milked. The cows themselves are family owned and from what we can tell have great herd values. Our base includes eggs making it what’s known as a custard base. “Eva’s Supreme” (really, we are not making this up!) is Cool Moon’s own ice cream base recipe, developed over the course of several years.

Will I be able to see you making the ice cream?

YES! Once our build-out is complete, walk by and look into our windows on NW Johnson Street. Wave at us and we’ll wave back. We also plan to have a program where school classes can visit, learn about real ice cream, and see how it is made. We believe in real-world learning experiences so every second grader will then sign a non-compete clause! (Of course we are joking, the Oregon legislature just outlawed the practice!)

Will you be making sugar-free ice cream?

We wish we could, but we can’t. It just doesn’t work with our recipes. We will try and have some non-ice cream frozen deserts that are sugar free.

Will you be making low-fat ice cream?

See above. However, our sorbets will be low-fat.

Will Cool Moon have products that vegans can eat?

Our Sorbets are made without dairy products or eggs. We will, however, allow vegans to eat anything they want! (What happens at Cool Moon stays at Cool Moon!)

What about allergies?

We are primarily an ice cream shop, a fact that places us squarely in the sights of a number of not-uncommon allergens: dairy products, eggs, and nuts. There is really not much we can do about this--we are a very small shop, and these ingredients are core to what we are about. Hence, in the interests of 100 percent safety, we ask our customers to assume that all of our products could contain some of the above ingredients.

We also will have some flavors, like our version of rum raisin that will use a tad of real alcohol. The amounts of alcohol are so small that even the ever-vigilant OLCC is unconcerned, but we want to let you know. These flavors will be labeled accordingly.

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