In 2017, Alexa Norlin, founder of Normal® in Salt Lake City, opened a traveling soft serve ice cream truck. In 2018, the business relocated to Trolley Square and in 2019 a storefront opened, serving house-made premium soft serve ice cream, ice cream sandwiches, ice cream bars, Normal® choco tacos and ice cream cakes.
I am a pastry chef that left restaurants for my love of ice cream. Normal® is my baby! I create nearly all of the recipes. Normal® should be the ultimate experience, whether at one of our locations, or at your own house, eating an ice cream sando.
Alexa Norlin, Founder of Normal®
Making nearly everything by hand, Norlin cares just as much about texture as she does flavors, which is what makes Normal® composed cones something special, “like a plated dessert but on an ice cream cone.” Fun combinations like, Anybody Want a Peanut?, filled with butterfinger milk soft serve, dark chocolate dip, and house-made peanut toffee, or the Trashberry™ Reincarnate, stuffed full of many-berry soft serve, dark chocolate dip, cocoa pebbles and berry “blood,” or the Candy Bar Cone, loaded with cream cheese soft serve, dark chocolate dip, and a heath and crunch bar crumble.
We make nearly everything by hand. Except our staple fruity pebbles that, let’s be honest, no one can make a better version of that. Ice cream should be nostalgic, but grown up, with more interesting flavor combinations, and creative toppings.
Alexa Norlin
The ice cream truck, aka the Normal® Lab at Trolley Square, is where experimental flavors and ideas come alive. For example, if you grew up in the 90’s, take a trip down memory lane with Normal® Dots, that’s right, the house-made Normal® version of Dippin’ Dots.
The storefront is home base and the Normal® production facility, with more flavors and options available, like the newest flavors of the month. The most popular soft serve flavor by far, according to Norlin, is the salted vanilla bean, with earl grey and olive oil coming in at a close second. This month, new flavors like Friggin Bats, Blood Orange Julius, and Cherry Garcia, but make it spooky, made with Montmorency cherry soft serve, dark chocolate dip, cherry “blood,” and toshi cherry, are found on the menu. The composed pint favorite goes to vegan Coco Comb, a combination of coconut sorbet with house-made honeycomb candy and dark chocolate bits.
And if we’re talking personal favorites, for Norlin, it’s the “Handle” salted maple ice cream bar. Once the pastry chef at HSL and Handle in Park City, this special dessert, made with salted maple ice cream, Solstice Wasatch blend dark chocolate dip and a brown butter milk crumb, now has a steady place on the dessert menu at both locations. Other Normal® specialties include the Iced Vovo ice cream sandwich at Five5eeds, a combination of house-made shortbread cookies, white chocolate, coconut ice cream and raspberry jam, the Vanilla Waffle ice cream sandwich at Hearth and Hill, salted hazelnut blackberry jam ice cream, kahlua, house-made nutella fudge, and smoked vanilla anglaise, and most recently customers can now fill Mad Dough Bismark doughnuts with their favorite soft serve flavor at both Normal® locations.
Normal® desserts can be found on menus throughout Salt Lake at Oquirrh Restaurant, Lake Effect, Eva, and Trio Downtown. Composed pints, ice cream bars, sandwiches, and tacos are sold at Caputo’s, The Store: Gateway and Holladay locations.
And if you’re looking to eat all the ice cream your heart desires from the comfort of your own home, become a member of the PINT CLUB™. For $40 a month, get four exclusive pints of ice cream and exclusive Normal® merchandise, as well as sneak peaks and samples of the newest products.
Members of the PINT CLUB™ are our ice cream guinea pigs, if you will. And restaurants, we provide them with whatever they want, really.
Alexa Norlin
The Normal® store is operating with online ordering and curbside pickup only for the foreseeable future, due to Covid-19, and online ordering is encouraged at the Normal® Lab at Trolley Square. Keep your eyes peeled for updates @normal.club, as Normal® prepares to launch a local delivery program this winter, as well as a national delivery in early 2021.
Normal® is ever growing and expanding. The future and our growth will be creative and keep our ice cream lovers happy. Our next step is a foray into grocery as well as national shipping and delivery.
Alexa Norlin
