“The fairy tale is over,” read the headline of a Washington Post article when Liz Davis announced the sobering news: The Dairy Godmother—a frozen custard shop that, after 17 years on Del Ray’s main strip, had become a backbone of the neighborhood—would not be reopening in 2017.
After dishing out the rich, eggy treats since her now-grown kids were in their tweens, Davis was ready to return to her home state of Wisconsin—and put up her feet.
After looking for the right buyer, to no avail, Davis spread the word. The custard shop that closed for a few weeks every January would stay that way, for good. A bagels-and-pickles pop-up (Bagel Uprising now sells from within SnackBar, just a few blocks away) would take over the space for the month of February while its future remained unclear.
Over the phone from her new home outside Madison, Wisconsin—where Davis now goes birdwatching every day and keeps a garden—she admits the dramatic announcement did the trick.
“It got the alarm out,” says Davis, who vacationed in Holland for a few weeks right after breaking the news. “The hope was to get someone who’s like, ‘I can’t let this happen.’ Otherwise, you’re selling to someone who can’t decide between the Dairy Godmother and a Subway franchise.”
Russell Gravatt was that someone. Living in Bethesda, Maryland, he had been bringing his daughters, now 15 and 17, to the Dairy Godmother since his wife was pregnant with the oldest. A veteran of the restaurant industry, Gravatt was determined to see the shop live on and saw in it the opportunity to trade his night shift as a chef for a day job that affords more time with his kids.
“When I found out she was thinking of closing the place down, I called and said, ‘Don’t do that,’” says Gravatt, who helped found the original Austin Grill restaurant chain in Alexandria and worked, most recently, as a chef for a Shirlington-based caterer, Design Cuisine.
Davis saw in Gravatt just what she had been looking for: a combination of passion and experience. She spent a couple months last summer showing him the ropes, and the sale became official that July.
Customers who didn’t catch the “it’s closing,” and “no, not really” announcements in 2017 might not notice much change under the new owner.
All of Davis’ custard recipes conveyed with the business, as did the chair former President Barack Obama sat in during a visit to the shop with his daughters in 2009 (an employee decoupaged the seat with American flags to commemorate the occasion).
“She handed me a perfectly well-run, well-oiled machine,” says Gravatt. “There are a few new flavors I play with, but really—other than painting the walls orange—it’s pretty much the exact same place.”
As a chef, Gravatt enjoyed adding his own flare to the shop’s flavor calendar, like the “breakfast in bed” combination of maple custard and bacon in a waffle cone he concocted for Mother’s Day this year.
Those flavors of the day still appear alongside vanilla and chocolate, each made of at least 1.4 percent egg yolk and at least 10 percent milk. Gravatt has added to the mix a lineup of custards sandwiched between cookies.
The desserts dubbed “nostalgic treats” in Dairy Godmother’s tagline are still there, too, from trays of peach cobbler sourced from the Del Ray Farmers Market in the summer to sticky toffee pudding cake. A half-dozen sorbets come in flavors such as pineapple-cilantro and peach-champagne along with strawberry-basil and chocolate-malt ice pops.
Davis says it feels good to see the Dairy Godmother continue in her absence, now that she’s settled back in Wisconsin. But it’s also surreal.
“It almost feels like a dream now,” she says of those years spent behind the custard counter, “like it didn’t really happen.”