REVIEW

Ice Cream on Grand is one unique ice cream shop. All the ice cream is homemade, using fresh fruits and quality ingredients, but it has none of that preciosity you find in those urban ice cream sanctuaries found in city neighborhoods populated by 20-somethings. There are crowd-pleasing flavors and colors, like at Baskin-Robbins, but unlike BR, this ice cream is really, really good.

One of the most popular flavors at Ice Cream on Grand is Cookie Monster. On top of that is mint chip.

Restraint is not the rule at Ice Cream on Grand. You’d think something as simple as strawberry ice cream would be, well, simple and ordinary. Uh-uh. The cream is sweet, thick, and rich, tasting clearly of the berry even before you chomp into one of the many chunks of sweetened, almost candied fruit. Mint chip is chock full of chips. Cookie Monster, the frighteningly blue ice cream that is a signature flavor here, is vanilla cream heavily larded with cookie dough and cookie hunks galore.

This kosher ice cream stand was started by a Pakistani immigrant, Syed Rizvi, who spent months in a detention center before being deemed worthy of release into American society. While in that detention center, he met a man from the Ivory Coast who he eventually hired. Here is the American Dream in full flower.

Mr. Rizvi has done a wondrous job converting this former Carvel ice cream shop into today’s pleasant and spotless oasis, with plenty of seating both front and back and beautiful landscaping and flower beds. All this just a few short minutes from the New Jersey end of the George Washington Bridge.

Ice Cream On Grand has a pretty good-sized parking lot but this is a very popular place, and it is not at all unusual to find that lot packed. You may have to look for a spot on the street.

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BEST THING TO EAT: Cookie Monster ice cream