Ice Cream Social — Restaurant in Town of Smithtown

Granny's is one of very few homemade ice cream places anywhere on Long Island, but my daughter is also currently keto slash not eating sugar for health reasons and has tried and hated Rebel Creamery, Halo Top. etc. In a desperate last-minute pre-doctor search, I found this on a map and saw in reviews there was keto-friendly ice cream. She grudgingly agreed to accompany me to get no sugar added or keto ice cream afterwards.

Although I am a major ice cream aficionada (probably mentioned this before), my daughter is like a one-person Greek chorus and deems only a teensy tiny portion of all ice cream acceptable or even edible. I've gone to lengths to acquire scarce brands shipped (like Graeter's), she is 17 and unimpressed. This kid loves ice cream/froyo, but agrees to eat hardly any of it.

One initial great thing is they have old-school, not overly fussy chocolates for sale, white and milk (and some confections). There are housemade chocolate turkeys for Thanksgiving (now a scarce find) and a bunch of other old-school ice cream parlor offerings.

Flavors -- there is a fantastically diverse mix of ice cream parlor staples (vanilla/chocolate chip, cookie dough, etc), flavors you don't see all that often any more (chocolate cherry, blackberry chip, this reminds me I meant to look for rum raisin), and trend-focused stuff (peanut butter bacon IIRC, pumpkin donut, sweet potato with torched marshmallow). AND THEN I was super excited to find retro food flavors! Boo Berry! FUNNY BONES! I actually asked "is this funny bones like the cake?" and a lady ran over from the other side of the store and was like "oh my God! I love those! You have that?!"

The only downside for us is that it's clear across the island from Babylon, but definitely worth the trip. We don't have a homemade ice cream place anywhere nearby off the top of my head - they all got edged out by Coldstones and Sweet Frogs that later closed. It is SO hard to find a place that has their OWN ice cream versus something made and shipped in, and there is SO much variety here!

A guy who I think was the owner was there, and he was REALLY nice and didn't mind asking to try stuff but I committed to Boo Berry (after trying rainbow cookie and the bacon one) taste unseen because like all Gen Xers I will house a box of Frankenberry etc.

Granny's is definitely a gem and part of a dying breed on Long Island of food places where stuff isn't pretentious or overpriced and is made by people with lots of experience.

Back to my picky kid, who has tasted and tossed tons of premium ice cream, she really liked it, she had ZERO complaints. She noted that the texture is slightly different for keto or NSA flavors but that she didn't mind at all because it was extremely good. Even high-end keto ice cream you have to spend $100 online and it ALL crumbles and has terrible texture. Finding actually creamy keto options so relatively close was so cool, but I also see a lot of drives to Commack in our future.

I wrote this lengthy review because whenever I visit a "been there forever" place, it drives home how us Long Islanders drove out shops run by experienced people, not twentysomethings, and now we're stuck with a ton of "style" over substance places where stuff is subpar and expensive.

Other reviews didn't put me off but on that note, the place was clean (it's just not a mass-produced chain), I used the bathroom and it was also clean, the prices were reasonable, ALL the staples were there (dipped waffle bowls, BONGOS!, bonnet cones, flying saucers), the guy there was friendly and encouraged testing before committing, and so on. I honestly feel like these reviewers are used to trendy chains coming and going and forgot what a real pastel-tiled actually homemade mom and pop store is like. FOR SHAME, YOU GUYS. I wish we had a real ice cream parlor in Babylon instead of soulless Cold Stone and Kilwin's.

(crossposted from Yelp because I spent a long time writing, man, and I have been searching for NSA/keto...

I have always liked going to Ice Cream Social AKA Grandy's Ice cream. I been coming here for years. Their ice cream favors are great. But after tonight 11/21 @ 8 pm experience, I am not sure I will be going back. The young lady with Black/ Brown hair should really think about getting another job if she can not handle customer complain in a professional manner. Over the last few times I have gone here I have gotten vanilla ice cream with hot fudge. I literally go from store to car to eat the ice cream. When I open the ice cream it usually melts due to hot fudge. The person who makes the ice cream should know that hot fudge melts ice cream and to put it in a certain way so when the lid is open it does not melt everywhere. Tonight, with my husband the Black/Brown haired girl took my order threw the hot fudge on top which attached right to the lid. Was not very attentive and seemed to have a problem. I walked from the store straight to my car and opened the ice cream to ice cream pouring on top of me because the hot fudge melt most of the top. I brought in my ice cream to the girl because there was no way I could eat the ice cream like that. I gave it to the Blonde headed girl and told her I can't eat this because it is melted. The Black/Brown haired girl with her attitude took the ice cream and threw it in the trash with frustration. Didn't even say sorry or anything. She said what did you have again? I told her and told her to put it in a larger cup because the hot fudge melts the ice cream. So she did. She asked if I wanted a lid, I said no. I walked away to her laughing at the Blonde haired girl. What kind of professionalism is this? She was nothing but nasty with her facial expressions and her mask only covering her mouth. This is disrespectful and wrong to laugh at a customer. Rather them laugh make the customer feel better and apologize otherwise this girl should look for another job- with no customer service. This is also nothing new with their staff. They have a good bunch and some not the best. Please give training otherwise the employee should not be there. The worst part of this all was the laughing she did while I...

First and foremost, delicious ice cream - fun and different flavor options at Ice Cream Social in Commack. However, I strongly recommend that if you live nearby, take it home to eat. I live an hour away (but happen to spend time in that area regularly), so we didn't have that option. Low quality plastic spoons shouldn't detract from the experience - and it likely wouldn't be an issue for their soft serve (which is not the in-house made stuff), but it's problematic for the hard ice cream. We couldn't control how much ice cream we were taking; the spoon is so flimsy that each moment we dipped the spoon in, we were fighting just to pull the spoon back out - let alone choose how much to take with it. To make matters more frustrating, I chose to have my ice cream in a cone cup - which was provided in a larger plastic clamshell box in a different shape, in which the cone cup easily slid around. Especially with so little control of the spoon, it felt as if I could accidentally slide the whole cone cup out of the clamshell. This would have meant a mess if I ate in the car, or even just standing up without a table. Despite the name of the location, it's not the most socially oriented place - no tables, chairs, counters. Luckily, there was a large 3-ish feet wide freezer that served as my table while I stood, in front of the register. It's challenging to enjoy such a tasty treat when the process of consuming it feels like a chore. I seriously hope the owners reconsider the items they have chosen, as they are truly doing a disservice to their own product. In short, definitely check it out and definitely bring...