The best ice cream in Niagara is not on Clifton Hill. It is on a working dairy farm outside Niagara-on-the-Lake, at a frozen custard stand in Lewiston that opened in 1939, and inside a chocolate factory in North Tonawanda. This guide covers six ice cream stops spread across the wider Niagara region – three in Ontario, three in New York State – each with a street address, and each worth building a short drive around. If you want only the parlours you can walk to from the falls themselves, those are covered in a separate guide, linked further down.
- Avondale Dairy Bar – Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada (farm dairy bar, 40+ flavours)
- Il Gelato di Carlotta – Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada (gelato and espresso on Queen Street)
- Italian Ice Cream – Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada (family-run gelato since 1978)
- Hibbard’s Original Frozen Custard – Lewiston, New York, USA (frozen custard since 1939, seasonal)
- Platter’s Chocolate Factory – North Tonawanda, New York, USA (house-made custard, open year-round)
- Prohaska’s Oh Sugar – Lockport, New York, USA (soft and hard ice cream, seasonal)
One thing to settle before you plan anything. There are two cities called Niagara Falls: one in Ontario, Canada, and one in New York State, USA. They face each other across the gorge, and plenty of listings online do not say which one they mean. Every venue below is labelled with its town, region and country, so you know which side of the border you are driving to and whether you need a passport to get there.
Niagara-on-the-Lake: ice cream in wine country
Niagara-on-the-Lake sits at the north end of the Niagara Parkway, where the river meets Lake Ontario, about a 20 to 25 minute drive from the falls on the Canadian side. It is the wine country end of the region, and it holds the two most distinct ice cream stops in Ontario Niagara – one of them a farm, the other a gelateria in the middle of the old town. If you are doing a winery day, both fit into it without a detour worth arguing about.
Avondale Dairy Bar, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario
461 Stewart Road, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. Avondale has been running since 1955 on Stewart Haven Farms, a working dairy farm where the view from the picnic tables takes in roughly 90 Holstein cattle, cornfields and vineyards. There are more than 40 handmade flavours on the board and swings on the property for children, which makes this the easiest stop on the list to justify with a car full of kids. It sits outside the Queen Street core, on a farm road rather than a shopping street, so treat it as a deliberate drive rather than an after-dinner walk.
Il Gelato di Carlotta, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario
59 Queen Street, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. Carlotta’s is the gelateria on the main shopping street of the old town, in among the shops rather than out on the highway, so it is the one stop here you reach on foot. Alongside the gelato it runs a full espresso bar – drip coffee, americano, cappuccino, latte and flavoured lattes – and sells one-kilogram bags of organic Italian espresso blend in regular and decaf. One caution: a second Queen Street address circulates on review sites. 59 Queen is the address carried on the business’s own ordering menu.
Niagara Falls, Ontario: off the Clifton Hill strip
Most visitors to Niagara Falls, Ontario never get more than three blocks from Clifton Hill, which is where the queues are longest and the soft serve is most heavily decorated. Two streets back, the picture changes. Victoria Avenue runs parallel to the tourist strip and carries a good deal of the year-round local trade, and that is where the city’s longest-standing gelato counter is.
Italian Ice Cream, Niagara Falls, Ontario
5458 Victoria Avenue, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. Family-run since 1978 and roughly two blocks off Clifton Hill, this one makes its gelato to family recipes and lists coffee, panini and desserts on the same menu, so it works as a light lunch as readily as a dessert stop. It also makes gelato cakes to order, which is worth knowing if you are marking a birthday while you are in town. The walk from the tourist strip takes a few minutes and lands you on a noticeably quieter street.
Niagara County, New York: the drive north and east
The American side of the region rewards a car more than a pair of shoes. North of Niagara Falls, New York the scenic parkway runs up the gorge to Lewiston; east of the city, Niagara County spreads out through Sanborn and Lockport, with North Tonawanda further south towards Buffalo. Frozen custard is the signature format here – denser and softer than hard-scooped ice cream – and it is far more common on this side of the river than the Canadian one. The three stops below are worth the drive.
Hibbard’s Original Frozen Custard, Lewiston, New York
105 Portage Road, Lewiston, New York, USA. Hibbard’s opened in April 1939 and, by its own account, is the sixth-oldest family-owned, continuously operated frozen custard stand in the United States still trading from its original location. Four custard flavours run every day – vanilla, chocolate, black raspberry and pistachio – with rotating specials alongside them. It is a seasonal operation, so it is a spring-to-autumn stop rather than a winter one. Lewiston is a short drive north of Niagara Falls, New York, which makes this an easy pairing with a walk around the village.
Platter’s Chocolate Factory, North Tonawanda, New York
908 Niagara Falls Boulevard, in the Wurlitzer Building, North Tonawanda, New York, USA. Platter’s is a chocolate factory first, best known for sponge candy, with a cafe attached that serves house-made frozen custard and more than 20 ice cream flavours. The signature order is the orange custard with orange hot fudge. Several viewing areas let you watch chocolate being made, which makes this the wet-weather entry on the list, and the official tourism listing marks the site as ADA compliant. It is open year-round, which very few ice cream stops in this region are.
Prohaska’s Oh Sugar, Lockport, New York
5129 Lockport Road, Lockport, New York, USA. Prohaska’s Oh Sugar Ice Cream Sweets & Treats carries more than 40 flavours across both soft serve and hard ice cream, and bakes cupcakes on site. It is one of the furthest stops here from the falls, so it belongs on a day spent east through Niagara County rather than on an evening walk after the falls. It is listed as seasonal by the regional tourism body. Note that listings disagree on the address: the official Niagara Falls USA directory gives 5129 Lockport Road, while some aggregators show a Campbell Boulevard address. Confirm before you set off.
Ice cream close to the falls
If you are staying by the water and not driving anywhere, the parlours within walking distance of the falls on both sides of the border are covered in full in our guide to the best ice cream in Niagara Falls. In short:
- Swirl at Table Rock Market, 6650 Niagara Parkway, Niagara Falls, Ontario – soft serve, gelato and sorbet at the brink of the Horseshoe Falls, and open year-round.
- Sweet Jesus, 5875 Falls Avenue, Niagara Falls, Ontario – the heavily topped soft serve at the foot of Clifton Hill, open late at weekends.
- Sweet Spot, 305 Prospect Street, Niagara Falls, New York – a seasonal counter on Old Falls Street, beside Niagara Falls State Park.
- De Dee’s Dairy, 8715 Niagara Falls Boulevard, Niagara Falls, New York – seasonal, with hard ice cream, custard, sherbet and dairy-free and sugar-free options.
- Hoover’s Restaurant and Dairy Store, 6035 Ward Road, Sanborn, New York – over 30 flavours made on site at a working dairy, open year-round.
- Lake Effect Ice Cream, 79 Canal Street, Lockport, New York – small-batch ice cream overlooking the Flight of Five locks on the Erie Canal.
Planning your ice cream stops
What is actually open in winter
This matters more in Niagara than in most places, because a good share of the region’s ice cream trade shuts down between roughly October and April. Hibbard’s, Prohaska’s, Sweet Spot and De Dee’s Dairy are all seasonal. Platter’s Chocolate Factory, Hoover’s and Swirl at Table Rock Market are confirmed year-round. For everything else on this page, including the two Niagara-on-the-Lake stops, phone or check the venue’s own social media before you drive out in winter – opening dates shift with the weather every year, and posted seasonal hours are the single least reliable piece of information about any of these places.
An Ontario route: the Parkway to the lake
The obvious Canadian-side run is the Niagara Parkway itself. Start at the falls and drive north along the river through Queenston Heights to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a slow river road with the gorge on your right for most of it. Il Gelato di Carlotta is on Queen Street when you arrive, and Avondale Dairy Bar is a short drive back out of town on Stewart Road, which makes it the better last stop of the day than the first. Add a winery or two and it is a full afternoon.
A New York route: Lewiston, Lockport and the canal
On the American side, Lewiston makes the natural first stop north of the city, with Hibbard’s on Portage Road in the village. From there the drive east to Lockport takes you into farm country and to Prohaska’s on Lockport Road, with the Erie Canal locks in the same town. North Tonawanda and Platter’s sit south of all of it, towards Buffalo, so that one works better on the way in or out of the region than as a middle stop.
Crossing the border for ice cream
Combining both halves of this list in one day means an international border crossing, a passport or equivalent document for everyone in the car, and a queue that can run anywhere from five minutes to well over an hour depending on the season and time of day. It is worth doing once, mostly because frozen custard and farm dairy bars are a genuinely different proposition from the falls-district soft serve counters. If you are only in the region for a weekend, pick one side and do it properly rather than splitting the day.
What to eat first
Several of these stops sit close to somewhere worth eating a proper meal beforehand, and a couple of them – Italian Ice Cream with its panini, Platter’s with its cafe – handle both jobs themselves. If you are building a longer day around one of them, our full list of Niagara restaurants covers both sides of the border, from the Fallsview dining rooms to the diners on Lundy’s Lane and Main Street.