In the pantheon of beloved regional gas station chains — Sheetz and Wawa in the Mid-Atlantic, Maverick in the Midwest, Buc-ee’s in the South — Stewart’s stands out as the flagship for the North Country.

There’s much to love about “Stews,” but the locally sourced ice cream is the most iconic trait of the red-and-white road stops. As a local — and former Stewart’s employee — I have fond memories of the bronze half-gallons on summer days. But is the quality mere nostalgia? That question sparked a heated discussion among the writers and editors here at APN.

So we put our tastebuds to the test.

We blind-tested Stewart’s vanilla against five rival brands: Hood, Friendly’s, Breyers, Häagen-Dazs and Ben and Jerry’s. The goal was to find if our brand bias was blinding us to quality. Each of the six judges ranked the vanillas in order of best to worst, with the best receiving 6 points and worst receiving 1 point from each judge.

Our tasting session quickly devolved into a game of “Which of these brands is Stewart’s?”

When the scores were all added up, the results were revelatory. The group of college students who love Stewart’s picked Stewart’s as the best ice cream, which alone wasn’t surprising. But we also discovered that Friendly’s was the runner-up, coming in ahead of its pricier peers.

Stewart’s earned a cumulative score of 23.5, while Friendly’s scored 19.5. Personally, I was shocked at how similar the brands tasted. I thought anyone from the North Country would easily recognize which brand was Stews, but most of us struggled to differentiate it from Friendly’s — shout-out to Adam though, he had that zeroed in. I haven’t been to Friendly’s since its Plattsburgh location closed when I was a kid. 

Naysayers might say this was a condemnation of our tastebuds, depending on your opinion of Friendly’s. But try the exercise yourself. I bet you’ll be surprised at how good the brand tastes without the preconceptions that come with the name.

Häagen-Dazs was the big loser of the night, which I don’t think would happen again if we redid the experiment. The container we sampled had a bitter taste, with several of us wondering if it was freezer-burnt. The Bronx brand scored nine points, the only one that failed to hit double digits, and was ranked worst in three of the five ballots. I almost didn’t believe it, as Häagen-Dazs is one of my personal favorites, especially their specialty bars. Everyone I’ve spoken to on the subject also holds a pretty high opinion of the brand, so our results were head-scratching.

The rest of the results were as follows: Hood finished second-to-last with 13 points, Breyers finished third-to-last with 14.5, and Ben and Jerry’s was one point below Friendly’s with 18.5.

So what did we prove? Well, that our loyalty to Stewart’s is strong. Maybe that reveals a flaw in our testing method. If we were all trying to figure out what taste was the one we wanted to score high, of course the results would indicate the two vanillas that tasted like Stewart’s won easily.

But I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with tying your interests and tastes to a regional flavor, as it connects you with something local and roots you to a place. It feels good to hold pride in where you’re from, and doubly so when you can share a pint of it with your friends.

For that reason — and because the data proves it — I will continue indulging in my pro-Stewart’s agenda and encourage you to also visit your own home’s local-legend.

Besides, we only tested vanilla, and my go-to is always the sherbet.