Mark & Julie’s Homemade Ice Cream
476 Pleasant Valley Way, West Orange, NJ
(973) 731-6011
Web site: http://www.markandjuliesicecream.com
While I get a lot of my recommendations word of mouth, sometimes you find some of the best places at random — while GPS-surfing on my Garmin during a recent night out in the Montclair/Bloomfield/West Orange area, I came across a listing for Mark and Julie’s, a small, family-run independent ice cream shop in West Orange.
Mark and Julie have been serving super-premium home-made ice cream for 13 years now in their West Orange store, which is located in a very Orthodox Jewish part of town — most of the local food businesses are Kosher. Their shop offers over 30 flavors daily (which change according to availability of fresh ingredients) and the ice cream is made with Kosher cream. Mark Orenstein is also highly skilled with ice cream decoration and can make any special cake to order with your favorite loved one’s cartoon character or theme.
While Mark and Julie’s store doesn’t have the old-time character or the heritage of the more famous parlors in the area, such as Holsten’s or Applegate Farm, the sheer quality and taste of their ice cream more than makes up for this shortcoming, and I recommend it highly. You also couldn’t ask for nicer people than Mark and Julie Orenstein either.
Mark and Julie’s storefront in West Orange
The Flavor List
Owners Mark and Julie Orenstein
Some examples of Mark’s custom Ice Cream cakes.
A combo cone of Chocolate Raspberry Truffle and Royal Coffee. The coffee flavor is one of the best I’ve ever had, and the chocolate with the raspberry chocolate truffle candy was excellent as well. Because this is such high quality ice cream and has very little air content, it melts faster than other ice creams, so be sure to eat it quickly!
Julie demonstrating proper cone eating technique.
Chocolate Cherry Cordial sugar cone
Mixing up shakes
Crowds packed in on a balmy August Friday evening.
The store also makes home-made Italian ices. Shown here are raspberry/lemon and green apple/lemon flavors.
June 4, 2007 at 12:17 am
I tottally agree. mark and Julie’s ice cream is SOOO good. Better than Edy’s- which I love!! Julie and Mark are so nice and friendly too! They make you feel like one of tier family!
June 4, 2007 at 10:59 am
I’m lucky to have been treated to Mark & Julie’s ice cream - several flavors and loved every one. Too bad I live too far from their store but hoping they’ll visit me again so I can delight in the ice cream and their good company.
June 4, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Great great ice cream there. Rich, thick and far better than the fancier more hyped places in the area.
You especially have to appreciate that when they put stuff in their ice cream, they do it right. Full-sized pistachios in the pistachio ice cream. Big pecans in the Butter Pecan ice cream, etc,
If you are having dinner in Montclair or Verona, its an easy drive to their storefront in West Orange, and well worth it.
June 6, 2007 at 1:18 pm
funny to see this on your site as i live here…and their ice cream IS good
June 18, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Mark and Julie run a great ice cream shop and they are lovely people too. We had our daughter’s birthday party there a few years ago and they were wonderful to work with. I love their coffee and chocolate flavors. If they have the chocolate with the raspberry truffle things you have to get it. It’s wonderful.
June 21, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Mark! did you go to Madison Jr. High in North Hollywood??