The Mind Behind Elena’s on Orange Wednesdays: Geena Fram

The soft serve staple Elena's on Orange is extra special on Wednesdays. You'll find experimental one-off flavors different from the usual mass-appeal third flavor (Elena's only has chocolate, vanilla, and one other flavor (I know)). If the new flavor is well-liked and scalable for big weekends, they return it to the shop. But seemingly every Wednesday, the third flavor is well-liked: a giant line will form down the block to try interesting flavors like miso, tulsi, corn, and basil, and ones you wish to find as standard scoops like passionfruit, carrot cake, and pumpkin spice latte.

The person to thank for these delicious flavors is Geena Fram, the Flavor Developer who runs the test kitchen at Elena's. She is an ice cream evangelist, particularly after growing up in Princeton, New Jersey. "I was born and raised on very high-quality, good ice cream," referencing her local favorites, The Bent Spoon (Princeton) and Halo Farm (Trenton). Geena's experiences as the front-of-house at restaurants also played a role in her pursuit of new flavors: "I was always in awe of the back of the house… I'd hang out with them [and] forage for mushrooms and herbs before work." She remembers picking "2,000 violets for a tart" as an example of her excitement for using locally sourced and meticulously harvested seasonal ingredients.

Once Elena's opened around the corner from her apartment in East Rock, she was over the moon. She had been living in New Haven working as a neuroscience researcher, and more recently as a clinical researcher studying psilocybin's effect on people with depression and OCD. She applied to Elena's to work as a part-time server, gushing over ice cream with customers. After continuously suggesting new flavors and spending more and more time in the kitchen, Elena asked if Geena would want to dive more into flavor development at the shop.

Since then, Geena has spent a few 2 a.m.’s at Elena's prepping experimental flavors. She hauls in fresh summer corn from Freund’s in North Canaan and shucks it one by one. She relies on local farmers like Fairy Meadow Flowers for tulsi. She wanders grocery store aisles looking for inspiration and hears from friends and community members what flavors they'd like to see, and scratches them in her notebook, dreaming up new ice cream possibilities.

Her favorite flavor creations often push the limits. Her Christmas tree ice cream last year was exciting, but unfortunately, the first batch flopped, "I tried boiling pine needles in milk, and it smelled so nasty." She figured out that by blending fir needles into sugar, she could create what she calls "sugar that tasted like Christmas trees." Another challenging creation was her carrot cake flavor, which required her to experiment with lactic acid and buttermilk powder to achieve the "tartness of the cream cheese frosting.”

Earlier in October, the shop served paw paw ice cream, thanks to a donation of fruit from Broken Arrow Nursery. Paw paws are the largest edible fruit native to North America, which taste like a mix between banana, mango, and cotton candy. The paw paw proceeds were donated for Hurricane Helene relief in Asheville, North Carolina, where paw paws are a cultural staple. This flavor made a wave throughout the New Haven culinary scene, with East Rock Breads making paw paw tarts and Honeycone Ice Cream rolling out their own paw paw ice cream. People in Connecticut, most of whom did not grow up tasting this fruit, were gobsmacked by the new flavor hitting their taste buds for the first time – which is usually what Wednesday nights bring to the city.

It's not always easy. Geena has an intense love for flavor development and works full-time as a researcher. She also wants more flavors at Elena's, but the shop's size and expensive soft-serve machines only allow one other flavor. She also viscerally cringes when thinking about moments when they've sold out in the past before closing and moments when ice cream machines have let her down.

Despite all of this, her intense love for the craft is clear. Last Wednesday, I watched Geena bake fennel-cardamom waffle cone pieces to go with tulsi ice cream and design shiso hard scoops with furikake and umeboshi drizzle. Besides the pre-packaged pints, hard scoops are unavailable at Elena's, but Geena wanted to lean on the in-season plant. She also has "a dream of doing little limited edition hard scoop flavors." She tested the ice cream until the very moment they were ready to hit the cups. She asked people their thoughts on the saltiness ratios and their favorite between the two flavors, enjoying each moment with the fellow ice cream fans.

As a researcher and an ice cream flavor developer, all of this experimentation is entirely within Geena's nature. "[This is] the question we're asking in both research and flavor creation: who does this work for?" Both of these fields are in service to the greater good, "I need to see a reason for why I'm doing something… and it feels like it's doing something for people. It's building community." Her joy that overflows with developing flavors, the community she sees gathering each week, and her reverence for local flavors are contagious. "I just feel so lucky to do this. It's so fun."