The Local Questions, Vol. 10 | Field Notes from Palm Springs: The Best Date Shake in the Coachella Valley
A good sign…
Welcome to Field Notes. This is where we ask the questions, from the ridiculous to the sublime.
Today's question is near and dear to the hearts of many Coachella Valley residents:
Where can I get the best date shake?
The question is easy. The answer is a little trickier.
Date shakes are like barbecue, pizza and politics at Thanksgiving. Everybody has an opinion. Everyone is convinced theirs is right.
So this is not a ranking or a comprehensive list.
Think of it as field research.
By which I mean drinking date shakes and pretending there is a methodology.
If you want to dive deeper into the whole date thing, you can start here: The Date Shake: Theory and Practice. It is now considered the definitive academic treatment of date shakes, since I published it in Devour the Desert a week ago.
The Classic
Let's start with the traditionalist.
Shields Date Garden in Indio is the name that comes up most often when people start arguing about the best date shake in the valley. Shields has been growing and selling dates since 1924, and its shake is now part of the local mythology.
It is the sort of place where you can drink a date shake while contemplating the history of date farming. The educational film has been running since 1951, on a continuous loop.
Most milkshakes do not come with homework. But not to worry, you can skip or audit the class and still graduate with honors.
Shields uses date crystals made into a paste, vanilla ice cream and milk.
The old-school argument is refreshingly short:
Dates. Ice cream. Milk.
No kale.
No spirulina.
No collagen.
No discussion of whether your smoothie is helping your mitochondria.
Just a date shake.
The Coachella Valley Independent's readers have repeatedly selected Shields as their favorite, which is about as close to a scientific finding as we're going to get.
The Chunky School
This is about texture. In the wine world they call this mouthfeel.
We won’t get quite that fancy. Or erotic.
Some people want their date shake as smooth as a Palm Springs swimming pool.
Others want to know they are drinking dates.
Windmill Market in North Palm Springs takes the latter approach, with a rustic, date-forward shake. I've heard it described as "chewy," which is not an adjective normally applied to a milkshake.
It is very tasty—real OG. Pull hard on that straw or take off the lid and use a spoon. Windmill's sign out front announces its date shakes. Always a good sign.
Hadley's is another OG, dating back to 1931. Sitting just outside the valley in Cabazon, Hadley's uses chopped dates rather than the smoother date-crystal paste associated with Shields. It has also been known to add banana and nutmeg.
Which means that along Interstate 10, the date shake quietly became breakfast.
The Ice Cream Shop Version
Here's where the date shake escaped from the roadside farm stand and into the urban shop.
You can find versions at ice cream shops throughout Palm Springs and the valley, where the basic formula becomes a little more elastic.
Lappert's Super Premium Ice Cream, for example, brings a premium ice-cream sensibility to the proceedings, combining its Date Casablanca ice cream with vanilla ice cream and house-made date paste. It is more ice cream forward than date forward, which is not exactly a problem.
At Great Shakes downtown, the date shake lives among an entire population of other shakes, from familiar combinations to creative things to a few that were possibly invented at an ayahuasca retreat.
The date shake is still the local celebrity and they do a fine job with it. Plus you get a little donut on top. Apparently a date shake doesn’t have enough calories.
The Gelato Situation
At Gelato-A-Go-Go things get all Mambo Italiano.
Its Dario Date Shake takes the basic idea and runs it through a gelato machine's worldview.
Which feels rather cosmopolitan.
Palm Springs has always been willing to take something perfectly respectable and make it slightly more glamorous.
A date shake made with gelato is not exactly traditional.
But neither is a Maserati.
The Affogato Situation
At King's Highway at the Ace Hotel & Swim Club, someone looked at a date shake and apparently thought:
This needs espresso.
They were not wrong.
The Ace's date shake can be ordered affogato-style, with hot espresso poured over the cold shake.
Cold dates.
Creamy ice cream.
Hot, bitter coffee.
Suddenly the date shake has entered its café society period.
It is not so much a reinvention as an acknowledgment that dates and coffee have been getting along perfectly well for a very long time.
The Healthy One
And here’s where things get a bit weird.
Eventually someone looked at a milkshake made from dates and ice cream and thought:
Could we put kale in this?
The answer, at least here, is yes.
At Fruit Wonders in Palm Springs, the Green Date Shake combines dates, banana, kale, spinach, cinnamon, vanilla extract, coconut crème and almond milk.
Technically, it is a smoothie.
Spiritually, it is a date shake that has been called into the principal's office for a lecture about healthy living.
You can also order a version without the green leafy stuff.
Other health-conscious versions go vegan, swapping dairy for plant-based alternatives.
Monster Shakes offers a vegan date shake option with coconut-based ingredients and fresh dates. They offer a regular date shake version as well.
There is something wonderfully Californian about taking one of the valley's most unapologetically indulgent desserts and asking whether it could contain more vegetables.
Apparently, it can.
True confession time: maybe I'll try it... someday.
So Which One Is Best?
This is where we return to the original conundrum.
There isn't a best date shake.
Maybe you want the classic.
Maybe you want chunks of actual date.
Maybe you even want kale, although we should probably discuss this.
The Coachella Valley has somehow managed to turn one simple idea into a small taxonomy of local character.
Everyone has their version.
The classic survives. The experiments continue. And the argument remains unresolved.
The desert has been growing dates for a long time.
It can probably survive a little disagreement over what to do with them.
The Question
What is your favorite date shake in the Coachella Valley—and what does that say about you?
If you'd rather taste your way through Palm Springs than argue about date shakes, then come join us on a tour. Come hungry, leave like a local. Artisan Food Tours takes you behind the food, history, architecture and stories that make Palm Springs taste like Palm Springs.