Gelatto in Westfield

This was the Friday when Spring finally arrived in NJ after a Winter that wasn't that cold but it was certainly far too long. Today, finally the sun came out and it seemed like the overture to a very nice weekend.
We already had plans for a dinner at home so my wife and I decided instead to just walk into downtown Westfield, enjoy the weather and check out the stores and the people. We love to be in Westfield to just hang out, watch other people and may be by coincidence meet other people that we know.
If we weren't going for dinner, at least we wanted to have something refreshing to start the warm season. As it turns out Planet Smoothie is closing right when their busy season supposedly starts. (The location is still on the web site). I don't know what the background is for the store closing, but I was always wondering if Westfield has a large enough customer base to sustain such a place in particular during the cold season when the demand for smoothie is naturally lower.

Still, I'm really sad to see them close as I liked to get a smoothie there once in a while and there is no alternative close by. Personally, I like Jamba Juice better but still Plant Smoothie had a good selection, good quality and usually pretty good service. (I'm not too hopeful for a Jamba Juice arriving in Westfield pretty soon, I guess we will rather get another bank. ;-)).

With smoothies not an option we refocused on Gelatto where we actually have now two options in Westfield. Again, the same question arises: In particular with the current retail rent inflation that Westfield is seeing, can it sustain two Gelatto places? I certainly wish the answer to be yes. We checked out both "Hi-5 Candy & Ice Café" and The Chocolate Bar (formerly La Crema). The prices are roughly the same but subjectively I feel the portions are bit larger at the chocolate bar and at least when we were there they had a larger selection of flavors.

So we I got a cappuccino at Hi 5 (which compared very well against Starbucks and is reasonably priced) and my wife got the gelatto at the chocolate bar. We had bought the gelatto there frequently when it was still La Crema and we were actually pretty excited as we remembered it to be quite good and really really creamy. Today, it was good but not as special as we remembered. Maybe, we need to try different flavors next time. The summer is hopefully long enough to compare the two places a little more. Maybe we should do a flavor to flavor contest.

And I certainly hope Westfield has a large enough revenue potential to sustain both place. I also look forward to Hi 5 living up to its promise to become a true European style Ice Café.

Signing Off - The Westfield Blogger