Robin Garr's LOUISVILLE Restaurant Reviews

** The Widow's Walk
445 Riverside Drive
Clarksville, Ind.
(812) 280-7564
Ice cream aficionadoes can argue all night about who's got the best product in town, but there's little room for debate about which of the city's many ice-cream eateries boasts the most charming and idiosyncratic atmosphere.

It has to be The Widow's Walk Concrete Statuary and Ice Cream Garden, a place that could serve as the illustration under "quaint" in the dictionary. It's an old gingerbread house smack dab on the bank of the Ohio River in Clarksville, directly across from downtown Louisville at the suburban village's Ashland Park, the place to go if you want to take a picture of the skyline. Or to get some very good ice cream. Or concrete lawn statuary.

Widow's Walk is the direct descendant of the old and justly popular Quonset Hut, which was located on a bluff just east of downtown and also offered an odd mix of quality ice cream, concrete statues and a skyline view. But it was just, well, a quonset hut, while Widow's Walk is a beautiful old building. (Actually, on closer inspection, it may be a modern commercial building made to look a great deal like an old gingerbread house.)

Old or new, the builders did a great job, fashioning a slate-blue Victorian-style house with white and magenta trim and carpenter-gothic gingerbread porches wrapped around the three-story exterior. It's surrounded by potted-plant gardens, umbrella-topped tables, hand-woven hammocks, and an amazing collection of concrete lawn statuary, not your cheap mass-molded stuff but eclectic, whimsical art. The art and the hammocks are for sale.

The interior carries out the eclectic Victorian theme, with pretty lilac walls and white trim, very high ceilings and tall windows. The main room holds a few seats and tables - there are plenty more outside in the garden - and a glass-fronted ice-cream bar.

The menu is simple: Fourteen flavors of ice cream, frozen yogurt, and some sherbets and ices. A single scoop is $2 in a cone or cup; a double is $2.50, such a deal. Floats, malts and shakes are $2.75 for regular, $3.25 for large, and a banana split is $3.75. A variety of toppings include hot fudge, chocolate syrup, caramel, pineapple, strawberry, blueberry, marshmallow, peanut butter, whipped cream, walnuts and cherries. Special ice-cream concoctions are $3.50 - "The razzleberry widow" is typical, a creation of vanilla ice cream layered with raspberry, er, razzleberry ice. Or choose a brownie sundae, a chunk of brownie topped with ice cream and chocolate sauce. You get the idea.

I chose a scoop of cafe-cino ($2), a deliciously rich and creamy coffee ice cream with dark, not-too-sweet chocolate chips. My wife had orange ice ($2) and seemed to enjoy it.

We strolled, watched the river and enjoyed the sunset. Our ice cream cost $4. It was good. $