It started as a bit of a joke. For years Chris and I have said that the one thing we have to have on our trips by to the U.S is a Fribble at a Friendly’s restaurant. It started because after we moved to Europe, there were people — in both the U.S. and Europe — would always ask what foods we missed the most from North America.

And the truth was that we didn’t really actively miss anything. But, people persisted in asking, so we started saying we always missed having a Fribble. It was something definitely particular to the U.S., and something Chris and I did indeed enjoy having, even if we didn’t technically miss it day-to-day.

Unexpectedly, though, it developed out that getting a Fribble on each visit back to the U.S. turned out to be more of an adventure at times than we’d figured on. We found both faux Fribbles and broken Fribble machines along our quests to satisfy those Fribble cravings over the years. You can read some previous posts here about all the different “trials” and “tribulations” we endured. 😉

Now, back in the day — i.e. back when Chris and I were kids — a genuine Fribble was made with ice milk, not with ice cream. A few years ago, that recipe was changed, and it was then prepared with soft-serve ice cream, instead of ice milk.  However, in either case, the resulting  Fribble tasted different from a milkshake: it was not as rich, creamy and heavy as a standard thick milkshake. Friendly’s had had both milkshakes and Fribbles on the menu, actually. One of the ways you could quickly spot that a Fribble was different was the fact that a Fribble came in only 3 flavors (vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry), whereas a milkshake came in a whole bunch of flavors, since the flavor depended on the kind of ice cream put into the milkshake, and Friendly’s carries many different flavors of ice cream.

So there we were on the parenti tour a couple of weeks ago, and my brother-in-law took us to a Friendly’s to have our traditional Fribble fix in Florida.  And it was there we discovered the truth of the saying you  can’t go home again, at least as it applies to finding a Fribble. You see,  Friendly’s — which almost went out of business a few years ago — has changed their menu.  You can now order a Fribble with any flavor of ice cream put into it; yes, it’s now made with ice cream.

In other words, it’s just a milkshake by any other name, not really a Fribble. Well, it is technically called a Fribble, but that’s used now to mean merely a milkshake, as there are no other kinds of milkshakes on the Friendly’s menu.

Hmph.

Well, we did  order Fribbles anyway, each of us ordering a different kind of ice cream,  to see if the new Fribbles still had that je ne sais quois Fribbe appeal. Alas, no. It turns out a milkshake  is still just a milkshake, even when it carries the trademarked Fribble name. Ah well. It’s the end of an era.

So, we’re bidding a fond farewell to our Fribble tradition … and now we need to find another “favorite” food to use as the target of our quests when we’re in the U.S.