Toll Gate Ice Cream

I’ve been coming here sporadically for years, due to the proximity to where I live. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either. The service is always great, and they had a good selection of food and ice cream flavors. I’ll get the occasional milkshake, ice cream cone, or sandwich when walking/​driving/​biking by, and the proximity to the Rail Trail makes it even more convenient to visit. Their prices are reasonable, and they have a private parking lot that’s fairly easy to get in/​out of due to the light proximity. The interior is in pretty bad shape. The restrooms really need to be redone, the benches replaced, and the lighting improved.

I’ve been doing my best to stay local around my ‘hood for things lately so after dinner the wife and I wanted to get ice cream. I’d seen this place but I never looked like much. Well the short and sweet of it is that the ice cream is great (no soft serve), the staff was friendly and the décor was «nostalgic». I think you can keep the charm the counter, bar stools and booths without the cluttered messy look. The area back by the bathrooms (yikes) seemed like it was being used for storage. Don’t get me wrong despite the milieu I would return for the ice cream, it’s local and it’s good. I think they serve other meals or items also… I’d be a little less likely to try anything other than ice cream.

Homeade ice cream with all natural ingredients… Need I say more?
Okay, I shall… Tollgate is an absolute gem! Sure the décor is reminiscent of the late 50’s, but in all the times ive been there ive never noticed wallpaper «falling off onto seats» as one of the more ignorant reviewers put it… Funny how I was there last week and MY turkey sandwich (with extra creamy ranch dressing on the side) was so good I ordered a second one to bring for lunch the next day.
Onto the ice cream… The PB&J is award winning and for good reason! To think somone would actually say it’s vanilla with some sort of red sugar shows the depth of idiocy of some people. The pistachio is UNBELIEVABLE and so is the Thim Mint!
Highly recommend not only the ice cream, but the food AND iced tea :)

Ive been going here for 35 years. Unbelievable homemade ice cream. Pb & J is the best. Always friendly staff to get you what you need.

Horrible, I felt like I was on an episode of kitchen nightmares. Stopped in for lunch: décor was gross, 50 yr old wallpaper falling off onto seats, waitress was clueless, iced tea tasted like dishwater, order was all screwed up, turkey on sandwich was hard and crusty like it had been sitting out in a fridge, forgot a whole meal, asked for ranch dressing was given the kitchens bottle that had yellowing crust all around the top and the dressing was sour like it had been sitting out for a couple weeks, «famous» peanut butter and jelly ice cream tasted like vanilla with some sort of red sugar sauce mixed in, had Additional items charged on bill when checking out, with confusion on trying to figure out from the staff, and the bill was 60 dollars for 2 hamburgers, a turkey sandwich, 1bowl of over cooked crunchy buffalo bites, 2 iced teas and 2 small ice creams, first and last time, crazy, some business owners are delusional, couldn’t get out fast enough.

Toll Gate is essentially the same today as it was in the 1950s when my mother was a teenager. I went there in the 1970s and now I take my children. It is a quaint throwback to the 1950s. The menu is pretty basic, but the food is good. The ice cream is absolutely the BEST I have ever had. Homemade, with a wide range of flavors. They always have interesting new flavors (Thin Mint Cookie, Root Beer Sherbet, Apple Pie…). Toll Gate’s Banana ice cream is unbelievably good. In October, the Pumpkin ice cream is perfect. I drive from Ballston Spa on weekends just to take my kids to Toll Gate, not only because it is the best ice cream parlor but also because it is like a trip to the 50’s. Very nice, relaxing, quaint place. I hope it is here for another 60 years.

I love the this place! Yes, it is a bit dated, but it’s all about the ice cream; among the best in the area; it’s creamy and flavorful. My fav is vanilla, took home mocha (yes you can box some to take home) — very tasty.

This place is quant as people say, but that’s about it. Home made ice cream full of air reminds me of Price Chopper or some other store brand. The strawberry tasted like syrup flavoring. Sweet and chalky. We made the mistake of buying food here… Buffalo chicken salad and sandwich — close to horrible. French fries were even bad. Total price was $ 30 for sandwich, salad, two child size cones, and sodas. If the food was good it would still be expensive. Too bad the food was terrible and the ice cream was a supreme disappointment. This place needs an overhaul to say the least.

Everytime I go out to Thatcher Park I have to make a stop at Toll Gate. It may be a little pricey but its old fashioned and homemade and I love everything about it. PBJ is amazing.

Please accept my review in the form of haiku.
Oh, Toll Gate Ice Cream
You are so very tasty
It’s a long drive, though
It had been years since I was last at Toll Gate, so it was even more awesome going back for the first time in so long. Their ice cream is a bit on the expensive side, mainly if you’re grabbing a half gallon (which, if I recall correctly, is about $ 7). Regardless, though, it’s very good ice cream and it’s worth the price. They also serve your standard American style food: BLTs, burgers, grilled cheese, etc. Those are pretty good, but the real reason you come here is for the ice cream.
They do take credit cards, but there is a Trustco Bank right next door if you need it.
They have a website (
), but it’s really only useful as a list of the flavors that they have. Other than that, their website kind of sucks and really needs to be redone. You may ask, «but Frank, what more do you expect from a website for an ice cream place?» Simply, a more presentable appearance. A list of hours, and maybe some photographs of the place and its ice cream. But really, just a nicer, more modern look. It can still be a simple website, while also looking like it’s maintained, accurate (not abandoned), and modern. The Internet is no longer AOL circa 1996: We can do websites better these days, and we can do it pretty easily. I know, I nitpick about businesses’ websites way too much.
The thing that sucks about Toll Gate for me – which isn’t a fault of Toll Gate at all — is that it’s a bit of a long drive from where I live, so it’s not really a frequent option.

Interesting vintage décor. I had the orange pineapple. Sweet and good. We’ll have to have more flavors before we make a clear decision.

I love the old fashioned look of the place outside and in. I stopped in on a super warm afternoon to get a scoop of ice cream and was a little disappointed by the selection. I guess I read about the PB&J flavor on here and walked in expecting a lot more unusual flavors. It’s pretty run of the mill though. I walked out with a scoop of raspberry and a scoop of lemon sherbet and it was really good, but not that much better than any carton at the store. Still a fun place to go for a treat — I like the retro ambiance.

I have driven past the Toll Gate many times. I often say I will stop, but never end up doing so. Last night we were driving back to Albany from Voorheesville and I saw it coming up and said, «We’re stopping».
Many previous reviews call the place quaint, and that really is a great description. The wallpaper is an obvious standout, I think one of my relatives had a similar style in the 70s. But it’s the little things that really make the place feel homey. The wood in the booths is worn from years of people taking a seat. This isn’t something you can make up, this is real wear from real people year after year. More than anything, this really gave the place its feeling.
I was being boring and had a bowl of chocolate and the wife had some butterscotch swirl. The chocolate was super-​chocolatey; each bite was like the last sip of a glass of chocolate milk. It felt homemade too, was a bit of crystallization. This is usually a sign of issues with freezing too fast, but you’ll only really notice it in home made ice cream. So, it was not great to be there but oddly rewarding as if some sort of proof of being homemade.
The butterscotch swirl was OK, but not my type of selection. The wife said the chocolate was better.
While we enjoyed the ice cream, it happens to be pretty close to my favorite ice cream place in Albany. I don’t know how often we’ll end up choosing Tollgate, perhaps during the winter when the soft serve is closed?
However, we are very interested in going back for breakfast. The place really looks like it will be great for that.

This is hands-​down the greatest ice cream in town! My personal favorites are the Peanut Butter and Jelly or the Orange Pineapple (available only in the summertime). You can’t go wrong with a cheeseburger special and scoop of their amazing ice cream for lunch on a lazy day. I actually really like their food, although it is par-​for-​the-​course diner fare, but their ice cream simply cannot be beat. The restaurant has a great vintage ambiance, too– they have the same tacky wallpaper and red vinyl bar stools that they had when my dad was a kid.
And, don’t forget, it’s the only place around where you can buy bubble gum cigarettes.

Classic hard scoop on-​site made ice cream. Tollgate is the hard ice cream that stuffed that soft serve Dairy Queen junk into a locker at Ice Cream High. No soft serve mix and handle presses here. Ice cream come out of the freezer in front of you requiring a solid metal scoop heated a tad to get any traction. Fruit and candy chunks are huge. Waffle cones are homemade. Try the Coffee, Strawberry or Peach flavors.
Food is nothing special, but who goes here for food? Not even the locals. Now that I put that on the screen, made me think that if you’ve been to the place, that probably makes you a local. There isn’t a tourist crowd going through Delmar, NY.
I’ll go a little vain and say it helps if you happen to be a male with all your teeth as the ADK mountain women they employ behind the counters will always put an extra scoop on your cone. It became so obvious that my wife would stay in the car and ask me to order two so that she would get the same treatment. Which raises the question, is their no Brokeback Mountain for women?

Last of the best hard ice cream. The best syrupy chocolate ice cream soda, ever. I had to teach them how to make these in Minnesota. I tend to order simple sandwiches, if I order food at all. They do a good grilled sandwich. I can’t see dogging the place for an over priced breakfast, even though I’ve probably done it elsewhere. It’s not a place I can imagine getting breakfast unless it was ice cream. I was so addicted, I remember having one while in labor. I always love the ride in this area, and when you see the sign, I’m frozen in time. At least I try to be.

Quaint? Definitely. The place feels like it was here when Washington Irving roamed the Catskills. That’s about the extent of the positive adjectives I can muster. Stopped by once for breakfast — a couple eggs and a coffee cost me more than I recall paying anywhere else within 100 miles.
And when I say eggs, I mean plain eggs with a couple pieces of toast drenched in cheap margarine. Remember the first time you cooked eggs for breakfast? The food there had a similar naïveté. I felt like some high school kid was learning to cook on my dollar.
I doubt I’ll be back.

This restaurant, which has been there forever, is the soul of Slingerlands. The old high-​backed wooden booths, the homemade ice cream, and very adequate American cuisine make this place a winner. I remember my grandmother taking me here when I was younger, and celebrating with my classmates here after big events in elementary school and middle school. I haven’t been back since I heard the ownership changed, but for decades the place had been at the heart of the neighborhood. One of the few genuine and not manufactured cornerstones that truly brought people together.