It’s impossible to imagine — an Auburn downtown sans alcohol. Yet, before the Alabama legislature permitted alcohol sales within the confines of the city, today’s bar-scattered College Street and Magnolia Avenue had a different late night scene.
Sani-Freeze, or “The Flush” as it was known to students and locals from its opening in 1960 to its closing in 1993, was the spot for students’ social gatherings just about any night. Serving ice cream, milkshakes, sundaes and anything dairy to the South’s most famous cow college, Sani-Freeze was quintessential to downtown.
The decades it spent as a post-rolling Toomer’s Corner tradition cemented its status as an Auburn legend before its closing in 1993.
Twenty-three years after the closing of Auburn's beloved Sani-Freeze, the dairy bar finds itself again on The Plains with a slightly smaller venue. Sani-Freeze’s original owners, the Hunt Family, alongside Opelika’s O Town Ice Cream and the Auburn Alumni Association, have recreated the quaint eatery in front of the Auburn University Alumni Center.
Open three hours before home game kickoffs, people can once again order ice cream under the famed Sani-Freeze sign.
Limitations have understandably cut out a majority of the original menu items though. Unfortunately, Sani-Freeze staples such as their "Upside-Down Banana Split" and foot-long chili dogs remain in Auburn history.
Sani-Freeze offers soft serve and hand-dipped ice cream from O Town. The sole flavor of soft serve is vanilla. However, several syrups or “flavor bursts” reminiscent of the original “Flush” can be chosen.
The flavors, whose names have taken inspiration from Auburn, range from "Charles Barkley Butter Pecan" to "Bubble Gum Gus" to "War Swirl" (blue raspberry).
The O Town ice cream flavors recall Opelika, further tying the new Sani-Freeze to local history. The soft serve is as expected with flavors and a texture satisfying, but nothing eye opening.
Much more recommended, is the ice cream. Railroad tracks with savory flavors of chocolate and coffee was a perfect way to cool down in the 90 plus degree sun.
It is important to remember the new Sani-Freeze did not anticipate a student centered customer base, and there’s a reason the Alumni Association assembled the eatery’s reincarnation.
More than anything, it serves as an exercise in nostalgia. Though those with alumni relatives may have heard warm recollections of cold sundaes and milkshakes, the majority of University students lacking an Auburn legacy have most likely never heard of Sani-Freeze.
As a whole, the Sani-Freeze attempts to be something more powerful than a memory; for some, a double scoop handed to them through a window may be the living Auburn memory it was intended to be.
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