Long Island's emperors of ice cream: 4 standout shops

It’s been said that there’s no such thing as bad ice cream, but that doesn’t mean that all ice creams are created equal. Long Islanders are well-fixed for the stuff, with scoop shops gracing most Main Streets and shopping centers. Beyond the scores of Carvels, Baskin-Robbinses and other chains, we are also blessed with a few dozen independent shops that make their own homemade ice cream.

The term “homemade ice cream” itself encompasses a range of skills and commitment. At the very least, it means the shop in question starts with a liquid base that it churns and freezes on the premises (see box, below), adding whatever chips, bits and swirls it sees fit. But which base, chips, bits and swirls and how they are combined and served—that’s what makes the difference. From among the local shops that occupy the top of the ice cream heap, these four excel with their singular approaches.

THE ICON

SNOWFLAKE ICE CREAM SHOPPE

1148 W. Main St., Riverhead, 631-727-4394, snowflakeicecream.com

Where better to start than Snowflake Ice Cream Shoppe in Riverhead, which began life in 1953 as a Carvel? Twenty years later, founders Herb and Joan Kunitz broke away from the chain, upgraded their product and renamed the place Snowflake.

In 1988, Stu and Carolyn Feldschuh took over and solidified Snowflake’s standing as a North Fork icon. The Feldschuhs have mastered every facet of the ice cream maker’s craft, including one that often flies below the radar: shopping. “The ordinary way would be to get all of our supplies from one supplier,” Stu said, “but we get hundreds of products from all over the place.”

“It’s what sets us apart,” Carolyn declared. “It’s a total pain,” Stu added. And it keeps getting more painful. Carolyn said, “It’s a recurring theme for us — the top-shelf items are disappearing, and this forces us to do more legwork to keep up our quality. Like the orange flavor.”

Stu: “For my orange sherbet, I used to use this flavoring originally made in the ’40s for the Good Humor Creamsicle. When the company went out of business 25 years ago, I started hoarding the product. When I was down to the last gallon, I sent some to a lab, they analyzed it and recreated it for me.”

The Feldschuhs are also enthusiastic local-fruit boosters. They follow the successive harvests at Briermere Farms, about five miles north, to integrate first strawberries, then blueberries, then peaches into their ice cream. There’s no better way to celebrate June on the North Fork, for instance, than with a scoop of their strawberry ice cream smothered in lightly crushed strawberries.

But the shop's most famous flavor knows no season: Peconic Swamp Thing is a mixture of chocolate ice cream with fudge, brownies and raspberry swirl. It was introduced as a flavor of the week in 1989, and they have been unable to take it off the menu since. And Carolyn, dark mistress of all things chocolate, is loath to divulge which chocolates and cocoas powders she uses for the many iterations of chocolate she oversees. Pro tip: The plain old chocolate soft-serve is unequalled on Long Island.

For all the talk of “homemade ice cream,” almost no one on Long Island makes their own base. “I’d love to,” Stu said, “but, in New York, you are not allowed to make your own mix unless you also pasteurize it. I don’t have the physical space to do that and, even if I did, with the volume we do, I’d basically be running a mix factory.”

Snowflake, like most local shops, buys its mix from Panza (the region’s leading wholesaler of ice cream supplies that was purchased by GlacierPoint Enterprises in 2022) and relies on “premium” formulations that contain 14 to 16 percent butterfat. “I’m looking for clean, creamy and smooth,” he said, “but even though I really like their vanilla, I still doctor it with my own Madagascar vanilla extract.” 

THE MAD SCIENTIST

ALKEMY

260 Main St., Huntington, 855-255-3690, alkemyicecream.com

Yes, almost no one on Long Island makes their own base, but there’s one ice cream shop that does: Alkemy in Huntington. (There are a handful of gelaterias, including Dei Coltelli in Williston Park, Cheeks & Bean in East Meadow and Bagelati in Lake Grove, that do as well.) Alan Lacher opened this shop in 2023 with the goal of “producing the best possible ice cream,” which he believed he could not do without creating his own base. That’s why in an upstairs prep kitchen he’s got two commercial pasteurizers that slowly bring the temperature of the base up to 142°F and hold it there for 30 minutes to kill any harmful microbes. Unlike commercial bases, Alkemy’s contains no emulsifiers or stabilizers.

How can Lacher eschew these additives? Because he does not use a batch freezer to make ice cream and he has neither tubs nor display cases. Instead, he uses liquid nitrogen to make individual portions of ice cream to order. Exposed to the air, the nitrogen immediately vaporizes, blasting the liquid base with such cold force that it freezes immediately without giving ice crystals the chance to form. The front of the shop is dominated by a towering vacuum-insulated, stainless-steel cryogenic tank of the harmless gas (it makes up 78 percent of our atmosphere). A network of overhead pipes and hoses conveys the gas to the counter where patrons choose one of a dozen bases, among them, vanilla bean, milk or dark chocolate, cold-brew coffee, mint, banana and dulce de leche. An “Alkemist” measures the base into the bowl of a heavy-duty stand mixer and starts mixing while releasing the nitrogen into the rotating bowl. By the time the vapor cloud has dissipated, the liquid has coalesced into a creamy ice cream almost as dense as gelato. No dairy? No problem. Lacher uses cashew milk (also made on the premises) to make excellent vegan ice cream.

Lacher’s ice cream vision dates from his high school when a chemistry teacher demonstrated the states of matter — gas, liquid, solid — by using liquid nitrogen to produce ice cream. “The ice cream wasn’t very good,” he recalled. “But the demonstration stayed with me.” The Huntington resident grew up to create software systems, but when he retired in 2022 at age 50, he wanted to devote himself to something he loved, something everyone loved: ice cream. Lacher may be a purist when it comes to his base flavors, but he lets his hair down when it comes to toppings. Bring on the M&M’s, for example, or cinnamon-toast crunch. You can craft your own sundae with hot fudge, dulce de leche, marshmallow cream, roasted strawberries, peanut butter ribbon or a hard chocolate shell. Alkemy also has signature confections such as a s’mores sundae (chocolate ice cream topped with graham crackers and meringue that is brûlée-ed with a butane torch and roasted-strawberry ice cream served with a hypodermic injector loaded with balsamic glaze. What else would you expect from a science geek?

THE CHEF

ICE CREAM SOCIAL

1153 Jericho Tpke., Commack, 631-543-7501 and 761 Pulaski Rd., Greenlawn, 631-754-0692, icecreamsocialli.com

And what kind of ice cream shop would you expect from a trained chef? The answer is Ice Cream Social. Rob and Christine McCue took over Commack’s Granny’s Ice Cream in 2018 and set about grafting Rob’s culinary sophistication onto Granny’s old-fashioned appeal. In 2021, they changed the name to Ice Cream Social and opened a second store in Greenlawn in 2025.

Rob graduated with a culinary degree from New York Institute of Technology in Central Islip and ran kitchens for several corporate food services before competing on Gordon Ramsay’s “Hell’s Kitchen” in 2010. He used that pad to launch his own restaurant, The Fat Monk, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and cooked at the James Beard House. The shift to ice cream came when he and his family bought a house on Long Island.

“It’s the same as when I had a restaurant,” he said. “I walk around looking constantly for inspiration. Sometimes I dream of flavors.” The dreams don’t always pan out. Christine, past whose palate all flavors must advance, recalled that “we couldn’t get vanilla bean–olive oil off the ground,” but Mexican chocolate (with cinnamon and hot chilies) and lemon-poppyseed have become favorites.

Rob’s job doesn’t stop at the conception phase. Execution ranges from laborious to obsessive: He candies his own lemon peel for the lemon-poppyseed. If chocolate chips are called for, he uses a double-handled 14-inch cheese knife to chop up a bar of Merckens dark chocolate. “That’s why I have carpal tunnel,” he quipped. Many of his most popular flavors fuse old-school comfort with a chef’s compulsion to cook from scratch. Take the “Brunch” ice cream: Rob fries and candies his own bacon, makes his own French toast and pancakes and then chops everything up to be blended into a vanilla-maple base.

He could make Key lime pie ice cream by using blobs of lime custard and chopped graham crackers but no: He makes eight-inch pies that he then breaks into rough crumbles. Ditto the blueberry crumble. The flavors take not only work but planning. For that reason, Ice Cream Social’s 16 “small batch” flavors show up only occasionally and fleetingly. “I remember how disappointed these two women were who came in looking for the carrot cake,” Christine said, “but it was all gone.”

Most ice cream shops buy two bases, vanilla and chocolate, but Rob prefers to make his own chocolate by adding a signature cocoa blend to the vanilla base and using his “boat motor” (that is, an enormous immersion blender) to vigorously combine them. He has 30 chocolate-based ice creams in his repertoire — from chocolate peppermint pretzel to banana walnut brownie — but, in truth, none is better than his straight-up chocolate, not too dark, not too light, not too sweet.

THE MAYOR 

SMUSHT

158 Main St., Port Washington, 516-234-0580, smusht.com

When Smusht opened in Port Washington in 2023, Steve Edelson was betting on a gimmick to distinguish his ice cream store from the pack. For decades, he had a vision for a shop where homemade ice cream would be smushed (smusht!) between homemade cookies and then rolled in the topping (siding?) of your choice. He had no experience making ice cream or cookies—he owned a surgical supply company that kept him busy. But after he sold the business in 2018, his wife suggested that he either start making ice cream sandwiches or stop talking about it. And so, in the summer of 2020, he launched Smusht from his home, making ice cream sandwiches for pickup and catering. The business took off and, before too long, he was looking for a storefront.

The shop was an immediate hit but then something odd happened. “Originally, 70 to 80 percent of our sales were sandwiches,” Edelson said. “Now it’s 80 percent ice cream — maybe with a cookie on the side.” He bows to no bakery when it comes to the quality of his chocolate chip, funfetti, snickerdoodle and M&M cookies but, he admitted, “I’m not spending a lot of time on cookie development or coming up with new varieties. Our ice cream has become the star.” Still, it’s no surprise that Smusht’s bestselling flavor is Cookie Monster, a final resting place for leftover cookies and ones that were injured during the smushing process. “It’s different every batch, depending on which cookies we use.”

Cookie Monster is made with vanilla base tinted a shocking blue, not with dye but with spirulina, derived from the seaweed of the same name. Edelstein makes a practice of using natural coloring agents such as turmeric to “bump up” the yellow in the banana ice cream, annatto to lend a golden hue to the salted caramel, and beet juice for the strawberry. “It doesn’t matter how many strawberries I use,” he noted. “It is still too pale.” He is, however, proud of his undyed pistachio which gets its pale green color solely from nuts and imported paste and packs a nutty wallop.

Perhaps because he became a small business owner later in life, Edelson is bullish on helping others in the community trying to do the same, and he is always on the lookout for local collaborators to promote. His cookie dough ice cream uses gluten-free dough from Port Washington GF baker Momma’s Got Cookies. (Smusht has a dedicated case for gluten- and nut-free ice creams.) And Port Washingtonian Claire Brezel owns an estate in Italy, Casale Sonnino, and her extra-virgin olive oil wound up in an ice cream along with candied yuzu peel sourced from the Port Washington specialty produce boutique Snacks & Designs. On a less refined note, Girl Scout cookie season heralds the production of Thin Mint and Samoa ice creams, but Edelson turns this into a mentoring moment. “I’ll buy two boxes from any Girl Scout who comes in and gives me a pitch. I’ll talk to them about starting and running a business and they can earn their entrepreneurship badge.”