Hamptons Verified

Cold dessert

Ice Cream

Where to get ice cream on the East End. Old soda fountains, roadside soft-serve, seasonal scoop shops. Honest about which have the line and which are quiet enough to walk up to.

Breakfast: coffee + early morning countersBeaches: the canonical post-beach moveSunset: pair a late scoop with golden hour

Filters11 scoop shops
Hard serveSoft serveSoda fountainFrozen yogurtFudge + ice cream

South Fork · 7 spots

Westhampton Beach east to Montauk

  • 🍨 Hard serve · 🍦 Soft serve · East Hampton

    A La Mode Shoppe

    Allergy-free hard pack + a house soft serve

    The Newtown Lane successor to Scoop du Jour, which finally closed in December 2020 after twenty-six years. A La Mode took the same storefront in 2022 and made it work on a different footing: small-batch hard pack, soft serve, and a kitchen that is nut-free, sesame-free, and egg-free — the rare Hamptons scoop shop where an allergy kid can actually order. At least twenty flavors on any given day, eight of them always dairy-free.

    Hours · Daily in season, seasonal hours (call ahead off-season)

    $Summer onlySeatingParking: street
    WebsiteInstagram
  • 🥤 Soda fountain · 🍨 Hard serve · Southampton

    Sip 'n Soda

    Homemade ice cream from a 1958 family recipe never written down

    The Parash family opened the soda fountain in 1958 and the same stainless counter is still the centerpiece. Over forty rotating flavors of homemade ice cream built from a recipe the family memorizes rather than writes down. Black raspberry chip, peach, lemon custard, Nutella — the summer rotation rewards repeat visits. The Lime Rickey is the house move on a hot afternoon. It is the one venue on this list that is also a sit-down breakfast-and-lunch counter.

    Hours · Breakfast through late afternoon daily (year-round, cash preferred)

    $Year-roundSeatingParking: street
    Also on /breakfast
    Website
  • 🍧 Frozen yogurt · Sag Harbor

    BuddhaBerry

    Self-serve tart yogurt + a topping wall with 100+ options

    Not technically ice cream, but the closest thing to a walk-up cold dessert on Sag Harbor Main Street that is actually open late and almost always has a line you can see the end of. Self-serve yogurt by weight, more than a hundred toppings including the unusual stuff (toasted quinoa, probiotics, a proper granola), and nut-free and dairy-free lanes. Also pours crepes, waffles, bubble tea, and coffee if the person you are with cannot commit.

    Hours · Noon to 10 PM daily in season (later on weekends)

    $Summer onlySeatingParking: street
    Website
  • 🥤 Soda fountain · 🍨 Hard serve · Bridgehampton

    Bridgehampton Candy Kitchen

    On-premises hard pack from a kitchen running since 1925

    Opened May 2, 1925 by William and Nicoletta Parash — the same family behind Sip 'n Soda in Southampton — and owned by the Laggis family since 1981. Ice cream is still made on the premises in a rotating flavor set that always holds the classics: vanilla, chocolate, mint chip, butter pecan. The menu runs a proper diner breakfast through lunch, so a scoop here usually comes attached to an order of home fries and an egg. It closes at 4 PM, which makes it the right morning-or-lunch ice cream answer on the South Fork, not an after-dinner one.

    Hours · Daily 7 AM – 4 PM (year-round, no reservations, cash and card)

    $Year-roundSeatingParking: street
  • 🍨 Hard serve · 🍦 Soft serve · Montauk

    John's Drive-In

    Homemade hard pack and soft serve next to a burger and fried clam line

    Since 1967, a roadside walk-up on Montauk Highway that presses its own burgers, fries its own fish, and churns its own ice cream on the same footprint. The soft serve is the move after a day at Ditch, but the revolving homemade hard-pack flavors are the reason to come earlier. The queue moves fast because there is no seating — eat on the hood. Cash still preferred, UberEats reluctantly accepted.

    Hours · Daily 11:30 AM – 10 PM (11 PM Fri/Sat) — seasonal

    $Summer onlyParking: lot
    Website
  • 🍨 Hard serve · 🍫 Fudge + ice cream · Montauk

    Fudge 'n' Stuff

    16 flavors of hard pack next to a kettle making fudge in front of you

    On Carl Fisher Plaza off the Circle since 1979. Sixteen flavors of hard pack with hot fudge and hot caramel poured in front of you, plus more than thirty fudge flavors made daily in a stainless kettle you can actually watch. Cotton candy, popcorn, old-school glass-jar candy. The scoop shop for the kid who has already seen John's Drive-In three times this week.

    Hours · May through October, daily in summer

    $Summer onlyParking: lot
    Website
  • 🍨 Hard serve · 🍦 Soft serve · 🍧 Frozen yogurt · Westhampton Beach

    Shock Ice Cream & Dessert Cafe

    The cotton-candy cone + sundaes next to the WHBPAC

    Celebrating twenty-five years on Main Street as the only proper scoop shop in the Westhampton Beach village core. Ice cream, Italian ice, frozen yogurt, milkshakes, and a photogenic cotton-candy cone that the teen crowd treats as an obligation. The best walk-up answer after a show at the Performing Arts Center two doors down.

    Hours · Mon–Fri noon–9 PM, Sat noon–10 PM, Sun noon–9 PM

    $Summer onlySeatingParking: street
    Website

North Fork · 4 spots

Riverhead east to Orient

  • 🍨 Hard serve · 🍦 Soft serve · Mattituck

    Magic Fountain

    Custom homemade flavors in sampler trays, chipwiches, novelties

    Opened as a Dairy Queen in 1966, relaunched in 1977 as Magic Fountain, and in the same family since. This is the canonical North Fork ice cream stop and the reason Main Road traffic backs up at 8 PM on a summer Sunday. Custom chipwiches, sampler trays of the homemade flavors, and a parking lot big enough that the line never actually feels like a line. Closed on Tuesdays — plan around it.

    Hours · 10 AM – 9 PM Mon, Wed–Sun (closed Tues)

    $Year-roundSeatingParking: lot
    WebsiteInstagram
  • 🍨 Hard serve · Riverhead

    Snowflake Ice Cream Shoppe

    Homemade ice cream from 1953 recipes, rotating flavor of the week

    Opened by Herb and Joan Kunitz in 1953 on West Main Street in Riverhead and still making ice cream from the original recipes. The Feldschuhs have owned it since 1988 and held the line on the recipes — the flavor-of-the-week is a low-stakes tour of why a third generation keeps coming. Used to be summer-only; now year-round, which is one reason to keep it in your pocket for an off-season Sunday drive east.

    Hours · Sun–Thu 10 AM – 9 PM, Fri–Sat 10 AM – 10 PM

    $Year-roundSeatingParking: lot
    Website
  • 🍨 Hard serve · 🍦 Soft serve · Greenport

    Ralph's Famous Italian Ices

    Crème ices + 150+ Italian ice flavors next to the harbor

    The Greenport outpost of the canonical Staten Island Italian ice shop. More than 150 flavors of Italian ice and crème ice plus soft and hard ice cream, a block from the Greenport carousel and the Shelter Island ferry queue. Not quite the homemade-hard-pack experience of Magic Fountain, but the right answer for the walk back to the car after a Claudio's lunch.

    Hours · Daily in season, mid-day to late

    $Summer onlyParking: street
    Website
  • 🍨 Hard serve · 🍧 Frozen yogurt · Greenport

    Greenport Creamery

    Seasonal small-batch using North Fork farm ingredients

    Family-run for more than forty years, with a dairy and non-dairy spectrum — ice cream, gelato, sorbet, gourmet Italian ice, frozen yogurt — pulling from North Fork farms for seasonal flavors. A better answer than Ralph's if what you want is a single scoop that tastes specifically like August on the North Fork rather than a 150-flavor menu. Pricier by a dollar, worth it.

    Hours · Seasonal daily hours, later on weekends

    $$Summer onlySeatingParking: street
    Website

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