Southern Comfort

There are those in South Los Angeles who would tell you that the ice cream at Quick ‘N Split is as pure a culinary expression as Cajun deep fried turkey or hotwater cornbread. Quick ‘N Split’s homemade concoction, it goes without saying, is Southern-styled: sublimely lumpy, creamy, granular and sweet. The dish only comes in vanilla, with chocolate or banana syrup--or, when in season, with fresh strawberries and pineapple. Pale gold and ochre in color, the ice cream oozes out of a silver spout and curls into a cup like a lazy rope. With each swirl, the counterman bangs the cup, and the golden rope goes flat and forms a bulging layer nearer the top.

Lawrence Crisp, 48, sits on a plastic crate beneath a continually ringing pay phone just inside the Quick ‘N Split on Crenshaw Boulevard. He and his older brother, Floyd (now deceased), and his younger brother, Loyce, founded the fast-food chain 23 years ago. Wearing a bomber jacket, jeans and a worn Emerson College T-shirt, the L.A.-born Crisp has the wary look of a Southerner: watchful and deferential. When he speaks, however, he is all business. “I was a kid, maybe 7 or 8 years old, the first time I remember making homemade ice cream.” Crisp’s parents hauled out a wooden bucket with the metal crank and stirred in the ingredients: flour, eggs, heated milk, sugar. “We had the job to put the rock salt in around the bucket and sit and crank it until it hardened.

“My oldest brother had the idea of opening up his own restaurant,” Crisp recalls. “He was a master chef in the Army during the Vietnam War and became really interested in food service. I was working as a machinist, and my brother Loyce was working for Alcoa. Floyd called a family meeting and we decided to give it a shot. Our concept was to use our own recipes, when possible, and make up our menu items fresh daily. If we had actually known what was involved, we might never have went into the food business.” It took more than eight years for the brothers to open a second shop. At one time there were six Quick ‘N Splits scattered throughout South Los Angeles--now there are four--and the key to the chain’s success was the homemade ice cream.

Crisp interrupts his reflections to take an order over the phone. Then he continues, “The dish was created out of necessity. We used to buy our ice cream--gallons of it--but the orders kept coming late. My brothers and I remember the recipe that our parents brought from Texas. So we decided to make our own. It took us about three years to perfect it. We found that we had to add some things and leave out others to achieve the taste and quality we were looking for. We’d ask our customers for feedback. They’d tell us if it was too sweet or too rich, and we’d go back to the drawing board. After three years we felt we met that happy medium where 99% of the customers were satisfied. We make about 44 gallons of fresh ice cream a day for the four stores. We mix it all up in 60-quart Hobart mixers. Some customers ask us why it comes out of a machine, if it’s homemade. We tell them, if the machine didn’t do it, we’d have to crank it ourselves.”