Time for a quick one! Sometimes reviews like this just sort of fall in your lap... or in this case, roll into your neighbourhood on a colorfully decorated truck.
When I reviewed the first Toronto Shake Shack (there are now a few) last year, a few friends of mine noted how in that piece I didn't try one of their milkshakes. Perhaps an oversight on my part (what with "Shake" being literally in their freaking name) that found its way into the back of my mind ever since.
Well, wouldn't it just be some fine luck that Shake Shack Canada has been operating a food truck this entire summer, visiting locations throughout southern Ontario for a brief limited time (a single weekend at most). Turns out the final stop of this tour was Labour Day weekend at Woodbine Beach... a place certainly much closer to me than Lake Simcoe or Port Carling. Not exactly walking distance.
Naturally, I had no clue whatsoever about any of this until I was riding my bike home from work late on the Saturday of the long weekend. The beach was mostly empty, most of the lights were off but in the corner of my eye I saw this unfamiliar truck on the left, in front of the main parking lot of Woodbine. You can imagine the raised eyebrow of intrigue once I saw this was Shake Shack... the Shake Shack... operating a truck essentially a few beach backyards from me. I resolved to investigate this properly the next day, which I did... managing to visit the truck just in time before they closed for Sunday evening.
Aside from the truck, they had some various (Instagramable) activities set up for folks, like a burger beanbag toss thing, dueling foam french fries, QR codes for T-shirts maybe? I dunno... honestly I just wanted a milkshake and didn't look all that intently upon the quirky but still very much brand-oriented promo fluff. I'll give points for making their setup feel very summery though.
There were four shake options: vanilla, chocolate fudge, cookies and cream, or strawberry. I chose... well surely you've read the title of this article, right.
I wasn't sure exactly what to expect... beyond thinking at worst this would be decent. Well it definitely surpassed that, as this was indeed quite a damn tasty shake.
A very pleasant thickness to the ice cream... milky and creamy in flavour without anything tasting cheap or hollow about it. These flavours actually lingered on the tongue, almost like they expanded in your mouth. If this wasn't legit ice cream they're using an exceptional imitation... but I'm 99 percent certain this is the real stuff. There's too much genuinely fresh richness to it.
As for the "cookies" element... here I was expecting something akin to a crumbled up Oreo (or Oreo-like substitute), something with that kind of presence and crunch. This was similar... but it reminded me more like the buns of an ice cream sandwich (without that weird peeling stickiness you get from those, of course). The chunks/crumble of the cookie in here were mostly quite small but still blended throughout the shake enough that no sip or gulp of it was free of them.
That dark cookie flavour (also slightly crunchy in the bigger bits) combined with a very creamy ice cream blended down to a perfectly drinkable viscosity... all else I can say is: damn. A extremely delightful summer treat indeed. Shake Shack's shakes are also pretty good it seems, even out of a food truck near closing time. Thumbs up from me.
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