By Dennis Chu on June 19, 2011 • ( Leave a comment )

LIGHTHOUSE ITALIAN ICE

Address: 64 Bridge Avenue, Red Bank, NJ 07701

There’s just always something about dessert shops that makes me want to head over and try it out. Especially now that it’s summer, there’s no better time to enjoy some nice, cold dessert outside in the beautiful weather. The night after we went to Pizza Fusion for dinner, my friends and I decided to stop by at Lighthouse. When the weather gets nice, this place gets packed. The parking area behind the stand was completely full, and some people were even parking right alongside on the street just to grab some dessert. But for the italian ice, it’s well worth it.

Lighthouse specializes in italian ice, as the name would suggest, and they have a large variety of flavors there, including peanut butter, root beer, cherry, pistachio, and pineapple to name a few. You can get their frozen desserts in a cup or a cone, but I always prefer the cup because it’s easier to hold without worrying about it falling and I feel like I get more dessert sometimes. I went with a half peanut butter italian ice, half vanilla ice cream combo, although you can choose just one solid flavor of something if you’d like as well. The peanut butter / vanilla really worked, and it was especially refreshing in the 80 degree weather we were having. You can make a lot of different combinations from their dessert offerings, but they really make all of their offerings pretty well, so don’t be hesitant to be a bit adventurous.

Here are my rankings for Lighthouse:

Food: 5 / 5
The flavors were wonderful and there are so many to choose from!

Atmosphere: ~
This is just a stand at a street intersection, so you do get to see quite a bit of cars (we saw two racing Ferraris, quite a rare sight for sure). There are a few tables outside where you can sit and enjoy your dessert.

Service: 5 / 5
The girl in the stand was really nice and was expeditious in preparing our italian ices and ice creams.

Price: 4 / 5
As far as desserts go, my large cup size ran me a solid $3.50. It is a bit more expensive, but it is comparable to some of the other local italian ice chains locally as well. One thing to note: Lighthouse is cash only.

Overall: 14 / 15 (94%)