Artisan Dessert Parlor, Open Daily at Noon: Glace

Glace serves ice cream, soft serve, and a frozen s'mores hot chocolate at 1266 Madison Avenue, between 90th and 91st Streets in Carnegie Hill, and it opens every day from 12pm to 8pm. There is no reservation system and no table service, just a long marble counter, a topping station, and a chocolate fountain. For an artisan dessert parlor on the Upper East Side, it is the one built for a walk to the park.

Sasha Zabar founded Glace, and the name on the door carries weight in this neighborhood. He is the son of Eli Zabar and the grandson of Louis and Lillian Zabar, who started the Upper West Side food store that still bears the family name. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency covered the opening on May 31, 2023, when Glace moved into the space that used to hold Noglu, a gluten-free bakery.

His reason for opening was local and practical. He told the JTA that there was really nowhere to get ice cream in the neighborhood, and he pointed to a Ciao Bella on 92nd Street that had closed back in 2010. Families on these blocks had spent more than a decade walking to Lexington or crossing the park for a cone, and Glace set out to fill that gap with something more polished than a scoop shop.

In September 2024 the shop opened a redesigned flagship next door, and Eastside Feed described the new room in detail. A marble bar displays 14 ice cream flavors. A chocolate fountain runs at one end, and an interactive topping station lets you build a sundae yourself. Outside there is a 12-seat dining area, which is the best place to sit when the weather allows and the fountain crowd fills the room.

The candy side of the business arrived in May 2025, when Glace Candy opened as a connected shop, and Eastside Feed reported bin candy at $19 per pound with one register for both counters. Use the address on the official site, 1266 Madison Avenue, on your map. The white marble and brass storefronts are easy to spot from the corner of 90th Street.

The order that made Glace famous is the s'mores hot chocolate, a frozen chocolate drink topped with a toasted marshmallow and graham crumbs. BroadwayWorld described it as the item the shop is best known for when it covered the summer menu launch on June 4, 2026. It works year round: cold enough for August, sweet and chocolate-heavy enough for a November walk.

That summer launch added sundaes with real personality. The Sundae Princesse paired brown butter vanilla soft serve with a raspberry almond shell, and the Amalfi Lemon Sundae, a Peanut Butter Cup Glacier, and a Cookie Butter Pretzel Sundae rounded out the list. The menu page currently reads Fall Menu Coming Soon, so treat those as the style of the house rather than a guaranteed order this week.

Glace does not publish prices on its own site, and the only figures in older press date from the 2023 opening, so do not budget from them. Ask at the counter before you build an elaborate sundae at the topping station, because add-ons are where a simple cup turns into a bigger bill. A single cup or the frozen hot chocolate is the sensible first visit.

One more thing to skip for now: the Glace truck at Rockefeller Center, in front of FAO Schwarz, which the official site lists as temporarily closed. Midtown visitors sometimes plan around it after seeing older posts. The Madison Avenue shop is the only Glace serving right now, so make the trip uptown or wait until the site shows the truck as open again.

The crowd follows the school day. Carnegie Hill has a dense cluster of private schools, and after-school hours bring parents with strollers and kids in uniform who head straight for the topping station. Late afternoon on a weekday is the busiest stretch. Museum visitors drift in after the Guggenheim or Cooper Hewitt, usually in pairs, and weekend walkers come off the Reservoir loop in running gear.

For the calmest visit, arrive soon after noon on a weekday, when the counter is clear and the fountain is still pristine. Weekends are steady all afternoon. The unspoken rule at the topping station is one pass, one cup: build your sundae in a single trip down the line rather than circling back while children behind you wait for the sprinkles.

Glace sits one block east of Central Park, which makes it the natural start of a short loop. Walk west on 90th Street to Fifth Avenue and enter the park at the Engineers' Gate. The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir is right there, with a running track and views of the West Side skyline across the water, and it is an easy place to finish a cup while you walk.

If you prefer art with your dessert, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is at Fifth Avenue and 91st Street, inside the former Andrew Carnegie mansion that gave the neighborhood its name. The Guggenheim is three blocks south at 88th Street. Both are within a ten-minute stroll, so an ice cream stop slots neatly between a museum visit and the subway home.

Address: 1266 Madison Avenue, between 90th and 91st Streets, New York, NY. Hours: open daily, 12pm to 8pm. Service is walk-up at the counter with a self-serve topping station and outdoor seating for 12. Private events are booked through a form linked on the homepage. Subway: the 86th Street station on the 4, 5, and 6 at Lexington Avenue, or 96th Street on the 6.

No prices are posted online, and the fall menu was still listed as coming soon at the end of October. The Instagram account @glacenewyork is where new flavors appear first. Save Glace in the Karpo APP alongside the Guggenheim or a Reservoir run, so the sweet stop fits into an afternoon you already have planned.