“One of my favorite things about the ice cream world is being a part of people’s forever memories,” says Victoria Lai, 39, owner of Ice Cream Jubilee, a local chainlet with outlets in Tysons Galleria and Ballston Quarter.
If you’ve ever tasted Lai’s banana bourbon caramel or Snickers snickerdoodle flavors, you know what she’s talking about. A Houston native, she was attending Fordham Law School in Manhattan when she apprenticed at the Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie shop in Brooklyn. “I loved creating something tangible that makes people light up,” she explains. “Pie didn’t call out to me in the way ice cream did. My dad loves ice cream…and let us eat it every single night. I associate that with special family moments.”
She bought a conventional tabletop ice cream maker on Craigslist, started making ice cream at home (first flavor: coconut lychee lime) and in 2010 moved to D.C. to work as an immigration attorney in the Obama administration. But ice cream had her heart. She opened her first scoops shop in Navy Yard in July 2014.
Creative flavors and quality ingredients make Ice Cream Jubilee a standout. Lai sources her dairy products from South Mountain Creamery in Maryland, and the high butterfat content (17 percent) certainly helps. Her ice creams and sorbets retail for $8.95/pint; $4 for a single-scoop cone. This summer, look for flavors such as strawberry tres leches and blueberry pie.