Vintage Ice Cream Dishes – Chocolate Chip’s Best Friend

You can eat ice cream in a bowl. You can eat it in a mug. You can eat it directly from the pint (or quart on a really bad, terrible, awful day). And all of those containers are just fine, they’ll do. But it is a scientific fact that even cheap store brand ice cream tastes premium when you eat it from vintage ice cream dishes.

We don’t usually advocate for specialty dishes and glassware. We think margaritas, virgin or otherwise, taste delicious from a regular cocktail glass. We don’t think you need a trifle bowl to serve a trifle when any clear glass bowl will do a fine job. But we are absolutely sure that ice cream dishes are essential. Besides, they don’t just do one job on your table. They can be used to serve ice cream’s semi-solid cousin, pudding. Or fruit salad, if you must.

We took a stroll around Etsy to find essentials from the world of vintage ice cream dishes. And we’re starting with the most royal of all of them, the banana split boat. Having a dish that extends horizontally instead of vertically is key. That allows you spoon room to make sure that each bite has the proper mix of banana, ice cream, topping and whipped cream.

Indiana Glass produced some of the most workhorse glassware of the vintage era, including these awesome banana boats. The amber color definitely enhances the whole split concept, particularly if you use butterscotch or caramel instead of fudge.

Jeanette Glass is another essential vintage glass company, producing all sorts of useful and durable household glassware. These banana boats would be picture perfect with the classic hot fudge banana split.

Anchor Hocking is yet another glass company with a legacy of producing sturdy, useful, classic glassware. These sundae dishes are the perfect size for an after dinner dessert or maybe a mid-afternoon indulgence.

If you’re a rickety antique like us, you might have fond memories of a conical scoop of chocolate chip sitting proudly in a metal pedestal bowl at Howard Johnson’s (see below). If you’re a millennial, you may wonder what a Howard Johnson’s is. (It was a roadside restaurant that was the best ever for a million reasons including the delicious breaded rubber bands they called fried clams.) Although these Gemco stainless bowls are sleeker and more modern, they would give you the exact same feeling of Howard Johnson’s ice cream delight if you eat from one.

Man cannot live by ice cream alone. Man also needs ice cream sodas, malts, egg creams and shakes/frappes/cabinets (depending on where you are from). And those require a proper glass.

This assortment of mix and match glasses includes greatest hits from Indiana, Jeanette, Libbey and Anchor Hocking, and it makes it possible for you to tell your ice cream beverage apart from everyone elses.

If you are a shake lover, you can make shakes at home in a blender. But there is much less danger of blending the ice cream into oblivion, leading to a thin drink instead of a nice thick one, with a dedicated shake maker like this one.

Does this post make you hanker for a serving of ice cream right this very minute? Good, then our work here is complete. If you have a minute, share a favorite ice cream memory in the comments.