Get your swirl on, Philly style

YOU’VE got a favorite gelato place. You know where to find authentic Hawaiian shave ice. You’re hip to multiculti frozen concoctions like halo-halo and rose petal ice cream. But if you haven’t been to Joe’s in Garden Grove and tried two of Southern California’s most luxurious imports -- Philadelphia soft serve and its Italian American cousin, Philadelphia-style water ice -- you haven’t yet been to summer heaven.

We’re talking creamy kid stuff from the machine, swirling and marcelling into perfect cartoon ice cream cone shapes. Vanilla and chocolate soft-serve ice cream and orange soft-serve sherbet are three perfect choices accessorized with a collection of dozens of flavors of just-made, fresh-fruit Italian ices: blood orange, honeydew melon, peach and many more. Each confection -- soft-serve ice cream, sherbet and ice -- has a distinctive and appealing texture, and in combination they play off each other for goofily layered sensory experiences.

Kids, whether or not they’ve ever been to Philly, get it right away and are all over Joe’s chocolate-vanilla, two-tone or orange-cream twist or peanut-butter dipped. But as adult first-timers we slouch on the sidewalk under the bright green and red awnings and try to puzzle out the stand’s long list of today’s ices -- bada bing cherry, passion fruit, strawberry kiwi and 13 other flavors. One or two of us have almost made up our minds when someone points to another section of the enormous list of treats and we lapse into utter confusion over the prospect of a Joe “latti” (a paper cup two-thirds filled with Philadelphia-style Italian ice, topped with a generous swirl of soft-serve ice cream) or a chocolate dip.

Happy, smiling teenage servers step out and rescue us with samples. One after another, each grown-up takes a little taste from the teeny souffle cup or the mini-cone and, with a spreading grin of amazement, says, “This is good!” And as the sugar rushes from palate to brain, each adult experiences an immediate and inescapable connection to his or her inner 8-year-old and flashes to an ecstatic moment on some long-ago summer’s day.

No school! Ice cream! The alpha and the omega.

Owner Mike Abeyta brings these Philly-style treats to Southern California (in the case of the soft serve, in liquid form; the ices are made on the premises) but does tradition one better. With more consistent access to fresh fruit than is possible in Pennsylvania, he says, making his own orange sherbet and a variety of seasonal fruit ices was an obvious next step. He calls his ices Italian ices, realizing that few on the West Coast know what a water ice is.

The soft serve -- yes, it’s unbelievably better than the run-of-the-mill stuff -- is real ice cream, chock full of butterfat and of a style made by just six dairies “back East,” Abeyta says. It’s full-bodied, creamy and dense, and comes in that 1950s super-vanilla flavor or a milky chocolate that’s got a wonderful creamy-gritty texture. House-made orange sherbet has an excellent orange-cream flavor with just the right tanginess and a pleasantly soft mouth-feel.

Orange-cream twist brings together the vanilla and orange soft serves for a holy grail of beyond-Dreamsicle flavors. If this combination is one of your favorites, you’ll have a hard time not ordering it each time you head for Joe’s.

Endless combinations

BUT there’s reward in exploration. Every flavor of ice (they’re all fat-free by the way) has its champions and if something sounds good to you -- peach? watermelon? -- chances are it will taste good to you. The fruit flavors are fresh and robust, the texture is spoonable and soft but with a good slushy character. Put an ice together with a soft serve in a “latti,” the layered combination, and you can custom design each spoonful as you polish it off, enjoying now a bite of creaminess with a soupcon of ice, now a mouthful of icy fruit flavor with a touch of cream.

Order a smoothie -- at Joe’s, a thick but drinkable concoction made by blending your choice of Italian ice (lemon or coffee, say) with your choice of soft serve (vanilla or chocolate, say) slowly and carefully; it’s pulsed, really, using an old-fashioned milkshake machine. A lemon-vanilla version is wonderful, cold and sweet, with enough bright citrusy lemon to carry the day, and yet it never steps over the line to gelato, sorbet or milkshake territory. It’s a unique creation.

As the full summer moon rises and the long slow twilight takes its time coming, the kids and young families, naturally enough, skiddle on home.

The red Naugahyde and chrome stools at the parking-lot counter at Joe’s -- open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. during the summer -- fill up with adults stopping by after dinner. It’s a moment we don’t want to end, and, shamelessly, we connive for samples of some of the zillions of flavors we haven’t yet tried, vowing to come back for a plain chocolate or to try a butterscotch dipped cone.

Philly-style soft serves and ices may not be quite up there with the American flag or the Liberty Bell, but, with apologies to Betsy Ross, Ben Franklin and the city’s other famous daughters and sons, they’re pretty close.

susan.latempa@latimes.com

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Joe’s Italian Ice and Ice Cream

Location: 12302 Harbor Blvd., Garden Grove; (714) 750-1076.

Price: Italian ice, $2 to $4 (small to large), $6 a quart. Soft-serve ice cream and soft-serve orange sherbet, $2.25 to $4.25, $6 a quart. Joe “lattis,” $3.50 to $4.50 large; smoothies, $3.75 to $4.75.

Best dishes: Blood orange ice, mango ice, orange cream twist, lemon Joe smoothie, peach Joe “latti,” chocolate ice.

Details: Open daily, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.