Valpo Velvet Ice Cream — Restaurant in Valparaiso

My family and I were passing through on our way home to Chicago and saw this ice cream shop and figured we'd give it a try. The first thing we noticed, before even getting into the serving area, was that the entry way smelled extremely bad - like raw sewage. There was also a ridiculously long line due to having only 2 people working the front. When we were finally placing our order: the man helping us had no clue what the sundaes on the menu even consisted of, more than half of what we intended to order wasn't even available and when our 5 year old finally chose one of the handful of flavors left, there ended up being some type of metal clip in it; he showed it to us and even said "I can't believe we've been giving people this all day!" He quickly whisked the container away and disappeared into the back for 5 mins (as we were still waiting to finish our order!). Finally...finally!!... we get our order (after my husband had to ask, since he saw my shake in the mixer for as long as it took our daughter to eat almost her whole 1 scoop!) So now we're getting ready to go outside and finish what was left, and here comes the same man who helped us, carrying the ice cream WITH THE METAL IN IT, back to the front display!!!! When we told the hispanic woman there, she said "oh, it's ok, one of the girls just dropped something in it a little bit ago.." If they feel this type of behavior is ok, who knows what happens in that kitchen! RUN FROM THIS PLACE!! The ice cream, after everything,...

We went into Valpo Velvet today. This isn’t our first visit. It is quite possibly the last though. We went in and as we were standing in line a very young boy was making a sundae for someone else and he coughed on the sundae and the whip cream blew off. He proceeded to take a scoop and smooth it out. And then he says, Can I help you to me. I was very flabbergasted and said my order. He did not know how to make it. No one helped him. I watched him closely as he was making my PB/chocolate blitz. Then he says where’s the PB sauce? Out of PB sauce. Ok. So we go outside and eat our ice cream and I found not one but two hairs in my ice cream. Needless to say I didn’t finish my sundae. There was not one person working there that looked older than 16 but the boy that waited on us looked like he was no older than 12. As we watched them scoop ice cream, no one wore gloves, their arms and hands were touching the sides of the ice cream containers and they have a poorly trained child working there with no supervision. My son said it felt like the Lord of the flies ice cream parlor....

Whenever I hear the word Valparaiso the only thing I can think about and remember is the time I stopped and got ice cream there. Several people told me that I HAD to try Valpo Velvet Ice Cream because its the best ice cream they had ever had.

I was with several friends and decided to treat them, when It was my turn I ordered the coffee ice cream in a cup. The barrel of coffee ice cream was empty, so i figured they would make me choose a different flavor or go get a new container, neither of those things happened.

Instead the server proceeded to scrape the sides of the container and down along the circular bottom in the crease, scrape, scrape, scrape, until there was barely enough to call it a scoop. This is what was served to me, and what I had to pay for.

The ice cream was gummy and freezer burnt, in fact probably the worst ice cream I had ever purchased. No I didn't finish it, I sat there while my friends had their ice cream, then threw that little cup away.

To this day, the word Valparaiso just brings up a bad memory and money wasted. Scrape,...