Home Court Advantage: Leah Parrish-Pane Brings a Long-Overdue Sweet Spot Back to Fair Oaks Village: The Roost

For years, a stroll through the historic Fair Oaks Village offered boutique shopping, hair salons and historic sights, and almost invariably a brush with our famous local roaming chickens. But when the sun dips low and dinner wraps, a nettlesome void has loomed. For too long, the village hasn’t enjoyed a dedicated dessert spot to cap a warm summer evening.

Enter The Roost, a newly minted, family-owned ice cream shop that recently celebrated its grand opening at 10100 Fair Oaks Blvd. The brainchild of Fair Oaks native Leah Parrish-Pane and her husband Evan Parrish-Pane, The Roost represents the first dedicated ice cream store to open in the Fair Oaks Village in what seems like forever.

The Hometown Scouting Report

Longtime residents who pay attention to local sports recognize the name Leah Parrish. Years before she launched a business serving up premium scoops of ice cream, she dominated the hardwood just down the road.

As a standout star on the Bella Vista High School girls' basketball team, Parrish played the game back in the early 2010s with grit, good positioning, and an uncanny ability to read the glass. Today, a decade and a half later, she still holds Bella Vista school records for rebounds in a season and a single game, testament to a career spent crashing the boards and boxing out the competition.

That athletic drive didn’t stop at high school graduation. She took her talents to the coast, playing NCAA Division III basketball at UC Santa Cruz for the Banana Slugs (the quirky team name celebrates the slimy gastropod lurking underfoot in local forests). On the collegiate court, she mastered the art of protecting the paint and serving as the foundational anchor for her team.

It turns out that those same skills translate perfectly to a different type of court.

Defending the Home Court

After hanging up her collegiate jersey, Parrish-Pane pivoted from athlete to studying to become an attorney. She earned her Juris Doctor from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, added a master’s degree in alternative dispute resolution from Pepperdine Law, then opted to sink legal roots close to home. Today, she operates a successful family law practice, Leder & Parrish-Pane, right here in Fair Oaks. She and Evan also got busy growing their family, two girls, 14 and 12, and a pair of boys, 4 and 2.

Their venture into the world of ice cream started with a plan for a different sort of business. A couple years back, the couple arrived one morning at their favorite caffeine haunt in the village, only to find that the coffee shop had shut down overnight. The landlord, they learned, was seeking proposals for a new operator to take over the space.

They had four kids, workaday jobs, busy lives in general. Why not add a small business? Evan, a firefighter-paramedic for Sacramento Fire Department, had previous experience in the restaurant industry. He proved gung-ho.

The couple wrestled together a business plan and thought they might have a shot to grab the lease, at least until regional coffee kingpin Old Soul stepped up and got the nod.

Coffee shop vision deferred, they didn’t give up small business dreaming. This time, the spark of inspiration came during a girls-night-out dinner in August 2025. Leah and a good friend wrapped up a meal at Carmaleta’s, then began walking the streets in search of something sweet to eat.

“We're walking, and we're walking, and we're sweating, and there's no dessert,” Leah recalled. “I was like, there's got to be, you know, something – a candy store, frozen yogurt, like anything.”

Fair Oaks Village, they concluded, was a dessert-joint desert.

Scoring Big on Flavor

Evan loved the idea and the duo launched the planning process that yielded The Roost.

“We both are really happy in our careers,” Evan said. “But we love this. It’s kind of a passion project for us.”

At the start they considered crafting their own ice cream but soon discovered that they could buy full vats ready for scooping directly from Gunther’s, the legendary Sacramento ice cream icon and gold standard for regional frozen treats since 1940. Last fall, Leah and Evan found their storefront spot, a one-block stroll south of newly renovated Village Park and the growing bustle of Fair Oaks Performing Arts Center. The county permitting process and space renovations (the storefront had previously been, you guessed it, a hair salon) gobbled up more than six months.

The mid-May grand opening, perfectly timed to tap the approaching months of summer sizzle, saw lines at times stretching out the front door as prospective patrons awaited a chance to sample the goods.

The Roost pairs a dozen ultra-creamy flavors with an array of premium upgrades, including daily homemade waffle cones that fill the boutique with a toasted vanilla aroma, loaded milkshakes piled high with custom toppings, a rotating selection of dairy-free flavors, and creamy mainstays like Mint Chip and Cookies & Cream.

The shop’s branding is a charming nod to the town's poultry legacy, with an omnipresent chicken in the logo. Beyond this start-up phase, they’re brimming with flavorful enthusiasm: New types of treats (Evan showed a video of an NYC-inspired ice cream cone and toasted marshmallow creation), summer pop-ups during big events in the park, eventually a move to a bigger space in the heart of the village, and an expansion into more types of sweets.

As summer arrives and temperatures begin the steady climb toward the inevitable dozen or so days of triple digits, The Roost now stands ready to sate a crucial culinary niche.