DeLauro, Harp Get The Scoop

It’s not every day that you find a Congresswoman and a mayor behind the counter of Ashley’s Ice Cream, but during National Ice Cream month anything can happen.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Mayor Toni Harp got the scoop on how small business life is faring for the frisbee-themed New Haven-born ice cream outlet, a downtown institution in the city since 1979, while wielding scoops Monday afternoon.

Mike Kochis, one of the owners (pictured in the hat), said business at the 280 York St. store is good.

“Sometimes I wish we were a little bigger,” he said. ​“It gets really packed on this end.”

That’s because people usually hover over the ice cream case as they decide on the dizzying array of flavors, number of scoops, whether to cone or not to cone, kind of cone and whether they want to add toppings.

Being crowded is certainly not a bad problem to have, especially since a bevy of frozen yogurt shops have come to the city. Kochis told Harp and DeLauro that the premium ice cream shop still packs them in.

The two politicos came to not only chat with Kochis, but to scoop some ice cream for customers. And a line was forming.

“Who wants some ice cream?” DeLauro asked while loading up a cup of chocolate chocolate chip (that this reporter can attest was delicious).

Not to be outdone, Harp went in with a right and dug deep for ice cream featuring chocolate chips. She came up with two scoops and didn’t even lose her purse.

Brothers Josh and Phil Karlin originally opened Ashley’s on College Street at the dawn of both that then-bombed-out district’s revival as well as America’s premium ice cream craze. The brothers, frisbee aficionados, lined the store with the discs and named their business after Ashley Whippet, the dog that launched himself to fame by breaking onto the field with his owner during a game at Dodger Stadium and awing the crowd with his disc-catching abilities. The Karlins later sold the business, moving on to other ventures, and Ashley’s outlets popped up in Hamden, Branford, Guilford, and Madison.