Feature Photo by Brian Kachejian
In Williston Park, New York, there is an old-fashioned style ice cream shop and restaurant that is about to turn 100 years old. First opened in 1927, Hildebrandt’s of Williston Park offers customers a return to the past through its decor and food, while also remaining an active restaurant that continues to serve the community it originally opened its doors to 99 years ago. This past Saturday, June 28, 2026, I visited the restaurant for the first time with friends and family. As I walked up the block towards the storefront and saw the 1950s-style neon lights overhanging the entranceway, I knew I was in for something special. This was going to be good.
As I walked through the doorway, I was instantly transported to the old-school luncheonettes and ice cream parlors I grew up with in the Bronx in the 1960s and seventies. The restaurants I knew in the 60s had already been established for 20 to 30 years by then. Many of them were established in the 1940s and 50s. They all had a familiar style. Fans hanging from the ceiling, long lunch counters lined with spinning red stools, and those beautiful ice cream soda fountains. In the back, usually a handful of tables or booths. When I walked into Hildebrandt’s, I was surrounded by a replica of those bygone days. However, this was no replica; this was those old days still alive and well, just filled with a new generation of young kids eating ice cream, drinking shakes, causing a little bit of trouble, and having a good time. The place was booming. It smelled amazing. I couldn’t wait to be seated.
A Corner of Williston Park That Time Forgot
Hildebrandt’s sits at 84 Hillside Avenue in Williston Park, Nassau County, on a corner that looks much the same as it did decades ago. The light green Vitrolite exterior, the classic neon sign, the red vinyl booths inside, and the marble soda fountain counter with its swivel stools all tell you immediately that this place is not trying to be retro. Just seeing those re It simply never stopped being what it always was. That is a crucial distinction. There is no manufactured nostalgia here. What you see is what has always been there.
The building itself was the first commercial structure built on the Williston Park stretch of Hillside Avenue, at a time when the surrounding area was largely farmland, and the road was an unpaved dirt path without a single streetlight. When Henry Hildebrandt opened his ice cream parlor and luncheonette there in 1927, he was planting a flag on what would eventually become the heart of a thriving village business district.
Nearly a Century, Only Five Families
One of the most remarkable facts about Hildebrandt’s is how few hands it has passed through in nearly 100 years of operation. The early chain of ownership is not entirely documented, but what is known tells a story of community and continuity.
Henry Hildebrandt ran the place through its earliest decades before selling to Alma Steffens sometime in the 1950s. Steffens then sold to Helen Baum in 1974, and Baum sold it the following year to Alfred and Joanne Strano in 1975. It was the Stranos who truly shaped the modern identity of Hildebrandt’s, expanding the menu beyond sweets to include the full luncheonette fare the restaurant is known for today. Their daughters, Joanne, Anne, and Susan, all worked there through their high school years and beyond. Susan and her husband Bryan Acosta eventually bought the restaurant from her parents in 2007, and the two ran it together as a true family operation until Susan’s passing in June 2015. Bryan carried on, joined by his and Susan’s daughter Hunter, keeping the tradition alive and the doors open.
Central to that tradition was the homemade ice cream and confections that had been a signature of the place since the very beginning. Henry Schriever, the original candy maker who worked under Henry Hildebrandt himself, prepared the ice cream and chocolates in the basement every single day until he retired in 1974. Before leaving, he passed those closely guarded recipes to Alfred Strano, ensuring that the flavors that had defined Hildebrandt’s for decades would carry forward into the next generation.
Hollywood Comes to Williston Park
By the time the 21st century arrived, Hildebrandt’s had become something of a well-kept secret beyond Long Island, prized not just by locals but by filmmakers who recognized the restaurant for what it was: a perfectly preserved piece of mid-century America that no set designer could convincingly replicate. The original phone booth, the soda fountain fixtures, the tin ceiling, the red vinyl booths, the swivel counter stools. All of it original. All of it still there.
Film crews took notice. The restaurant appeared in “The Book of Henry” in 2017, and most notably in Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” in 2019, where its frozen-in-time interior helped evoke the feel of a postwar American neighborhood. The national spotlight also found Hildebrandt’s through food television. In 2011, Guy Fieri brought his “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” crew to the corner of Hillside Avenue, where manager Tom Bauman walked him through the process of making butter pecan ice cream on the premises, and former owner Joanne Strano joined Fieri to make fried mozzarella and sauce. The episode introduced Hildebrandt’s to a national audience and confirmed what Long Islanders had always known.
The Fight to Stay Open
The years leading up to 2020 were difficult. Business had been challenging even before the pandemic arrived, and when it did, a luncheonette with just 14 tables operating at half capacity was in serious trouble. Then came another blow. The building changed hands, and the new landlord moved to raise the monthly rent from $4,500 to $6,700, a jump of more than $2,000 a month that the Acostas said they simply could not sustain.
The community responded loudly. Petitions circulated calling for Hildebrandt’s to receive landmark status from the village of Williston Park, which would protect the building and the name even if ownership changed. Nassau County Executive Laura Curran wrote to the village mayor urging historic designation. Advocates pointed out that while the restaurant sat adjacent to the East Williston Village Historic District, it had never been added to the National Register of Historic Places and carried no local landmark protection, leaving it dangerously vulnerable. The push for landmark status stalled, and by late 2021, the Acostas announced that Hildebrandt’s had only a few months left.
Saved on Super Bowl Sunday
The rescue came on February 13, 2022, Super Bowl Sunday, in a story almost too good to be true. Randy Sarf, who had grown up going to Hildebrandt’s and considered it a cornerstone of his childhood, walked in that day with his father for ice cream. During that visit, Bryan Acosta confirmed to Sarf what everyone feared: the place was going to close. Sarf walked out having made a decision. He was going to save it.
Sarf brought in his friend Spencer Singer, a Sea Cliff resident, and together the two negotiated a 10-year lease and purchased the business. On July 1, 2022, Hildebrandt’s passed into its fifth set of hands since 1927, with the Acosta family remaining involved in the transition and longtime staff staying on.
Hunter Acosta reflected on the moment with relief and gratitude. The family had been roughly a month away from shutting the doors permanently when Singer and Sarf stepped in. The fact that the new owners were people the Acosta family had known for years made the handoff feel less like a loss and more like a passing of the torch.
The Food: Where the Past Lives on the Plate
How many restaurants are you going to walk into in 2026 where you’ll find a Cherry Rickey on the menu? That’s an old-school drink. Cherry syrup, lime juice, and club soda, mixed fresh right at the fountain. I made sure to order one and it was sensational. It’s probably not for everyone, but when you go to a place like this, that’s what you need to do. You need to order the past so you can taste it in the present.
Hildebrandts Ice Tea Lemonade photo by Cole Kachejian.jpg
Hildebrandt’s Ice Cream photo by Cole Kachejian
The ice cream is the crown jewel, and I can personally vouch for that. On my visit, I ordered both vanilla and chocolate chip, each served in the classic style, scooped into a dish and accompanied by a small silver cup, one holding butterscotch syrup and the other hot fudge, with whipped cream and nuts on top. The butterscotch alone is worth stopping on. You almost never see it anymore. Hot fudge is still common enough, but butterscotch as a sundae topping has largely vanished from American dessert culture. At Hildebrandt’s it arrives in that little silver cup as if it never went away, because here, it never did. The ice cream itself was exceptional, rich, fresh, and tasting the way ice cream used to taste before it became an industrial product. Simply fabulous.
Singer and Sarf came in with a clear-eyed plan. They would preserve what made Hildebrandt’s irreplaceable while making thoughtful updates. One early project was revealing a long-hidden tin ceiling that had been covered up for years. The classic cheeseburger stayed on the menu. The homemade ice cream stayed front and center.
And that ice cream is at the heart of their vision for the future. Made on the premises in more than a dozen flavors, it has been the soul of Hildebrandt’s since Henry Schriever was churning it in the basement nearly a century ago. The new owners see it as the key to carrying the brand well beyond its single Williston Park location, with ambitions to take the ice cream to a national audience. Given what I tasted on that Saturday afternoon, that ambition makes complete sense.
Why It Matters
There are not many places left in New York, or anywhere in America, where you can walk through a door in 2026 and find yourself genuinely transported. Not a theme restaurant. Not a diner built to look old. The real thing, still operating, still making the same recipes, still serving Cherry Rickeys at the counter.
Hildebrandt’s of Williston Park is one of them. It survived the Depression, the postwar boom, the decline of the American luncheonette, a global pandemic, and a landlord who wanted to turn it into something else entirely. It is still there at 84 Hillside Avenue, still open, and if you have not been, you should go. Order the Cherry Rickey. Get a sundae with butterscotch in that little silver cup. It was amazing. Sit in one of those red vinyl booths and take a minute to appreciate what it took for that booth to still be there.
As someone reviewing the place for its food and history, I found it challenging to record video and take notes because I was enjoying myself immensely in the moment. I was sitting there with my son, his best friend Kyle, and my good friend Ken, who is also Kyle’s father. We were sitting there laughing, sharing stories, and enjoying amazing cheeseburgers, french fries, milkshakes, and more. It was friends and family sitting at a table, sharing laughs and enjoying each other’s company. For me, that was more important than any sort of review or any sort of video.
I managed to get the job done, but more importantly, I also made some precious memories that I will remember long after the scope of this article fades. And I’m not alone. Everyone else who has walked through those doors for almost the past hundred years probably feels exactly the same way.
Hildebrandts counter photo by Brian Kachejian
If you enjoyed discovering the history of Hildebrandt’s, continue exploring Classic New York History with our features on Katz’s Delicatessen, Fraunces Tavern, Chock full o’ Nuts, Nathan’s Famous, Junior’s Restaurant, and many more stories celebrating the legendary restaurants, neighborhood gathering places, and timeless institutions that have made New York one of the world’s great food cities.
