Gene's — Restaurant in Bloomington

Review Date: September 9th, 2015

Gene’s is a sweet place to go.

Another trip to Bloomington/Normal means another stop at an ice cream shack and another blog in a long string of ice cream shack posts. This one happened near the time ice cream shacks start to wind down for the season.

As with most ice cream shacks, Gene’s is one of those small buildings that only offers outside seating. But, I do recall there being a drive-thru, which is not rare but somewhat uncommon for ice cream shacks. On this particular day, my girlfriend and I parked behind the building and walked around to the front to place an order.

After looking over the relatively simple menu, I decided upon the strawberry shortcake sundae. Aside from peanut butter-flavored things, strawberry-flavored things are my go-to items when I order sweets. I don’t remember what my girlfriend ordered (maybe a banana split?) but I know that it didn’t take long for our diabetes-in-a-cup order to be called out.

As I said in the last paragraph, the menu is simple compared to other ice cream shacks. I suffer easily from choice paralysis, so the lack of a million options was a breath of fresh air. We hung out around the building as we chowed down (can you chow down ice cream?) our snacks. Each bite was a bliss of strawberry heaven. After I finished off my sundae, I debated going back up and asking if they offered free refills. My girlfriend said I was being silly and too optimistic. So, I didn’t. But I did consider it for the comedic value.

Any who, Gene’s was a treat to visit. The menu was simple and offered a lot while offering not a lot at the same time. The parking situation is different. You park behind the building and walk around to the front to place the order. You can pull around the building and use the drive-thru, but you have to order from your passenger side due to street directions, I believe. I don’t think I said this in all the other ice cream shack posts but a lot of these places are CASH ONLY, so make sure you have some...

I'd recently gotten the chance to try this ice cream shop after hearing about it for so long. My kids and I looked forward to the experience. The time in which we visited was about mid afternoon I believe around 4 on a Friday the drive thru that they have was def getting business as there were a few cars in line upon arriving. We were the only walk up guests at the moment though it did take them a little bit to acknowledge and eventually greet and take our order. I was surprised by the fact that they only except cash as a form of payment which did almost hender us as we were just out walking and I don't normally carry cash on hand for safety reasons but I did happen to have some on hand that day. We ordered 2 medium cones and a banana split which totaled almost 20.00 which I did find to be a little on the pricier side considering I think of that as Cold Stone Creamery or Oberweis prices if that makes sense. The ice cream was okay in comparison to said places Oberweis being our favorite so I was a tad disappointed. It wasn't bad but you can tell in the texture of the ice cream in how it's made but the flavor behind it seems a little lost. My kids wouldn't mind revisiting but for me it just wouldn't be a set go to more of a if we're in...

Crummy place. Don’t mind dives, but this place is borderline dilapidated. Parked on the side street, walked up to the front counter and saw no menu. Asked the guy if they had a menu when he opened up the window. He said its up on the wall—it was on the far wall of the inside blocked by screens and machines and had no prices on it. While I was starting to look at it, some guy from behind the kid at the counter said ‘there’s a menu in the back with prices on it. That’s what people USUALLY use.’ Ridiculous attitude to have. If he wasn’t being a bit of a PoS, I might have felt bad that I didn’t know all the in’s and out’s of his run down ice cream shack. After all that, I walked around back to the famous menu with prices and it basically was just an ice cream truck’s menu. Three types of sundaes (why?), knock-off blizzards, and ice cream popsicles. Absolutely nothing interesting or worthwhile. I left. I have never been disappointed by a mom and pop ice cream shop before in my life until I...