The best soda fountains NYC families can't resist

Counter service, tile floors, ceiling fans: Brooklyn Farmacy is the picture book version of a soda fountain, the one you imagine when you dream of being served a root beer float served in a fountain glass. The room dates to the 1920s, but Brooklyn Farmacy opened in 2010, so it looks at the classics with fresh eyes. The fluffernutters and grilled cheeses and sundaes egg creams are made with great care, and with good ingredients. Most important, it will delight your little food critic. It doesn’t matter what you order, your kid will love every last taste.

Happy birthday, Eddie’s! This Forest Hills institution will turn 95 in 2020, which makes it the oldest operating ice cream shop in NYC—even the fridge could get a senior discount on a MetroCard. The soda fountain was already a classic when current owner Vito Citrano took it over in 1968, and he keeps the old traditions alive: All the ice cream is made inhouse. Even the hot fudge and caramel sauce are made by hand! If it was up to us, every New Yorker would be required to go to Eddie’s at least once.

Manny Rameriz started working at Dichter’s as a delivery boy in 1982, when he was a student at Bronx Science High School. He took it over in 2007, becoming the caretaker of a neighborhood institution that opened in 1943. But Dichter’s isn’t a quaint nostalgia trip, it’s a busy pharmacy and lunch counter where members of the community come to grab a sandwich and a black and white cookie, or sit and linger over the Manny RX, a signature sundae big enough to share.

That storefront sign, that counter, those white uniforms: Lexington Candy Shop is the real deal and a New York original. Opened in 1925, this soda fountain and luncheonette is a time capsule from another era. So what if the ice cream isn’t artisanal, and the chocolate syrup out of a squeeze bottle you could buy at a grocery store—you come here for the experience, a family snack after wandering around the Metropolitan Museum of Art.