The Shake Bar is the busiest corner of the diner and the one with the most questions. Half of them are some version of "what's the difference between a shake and a malt," and the other half are "what's a float." Here is the whole answer, once, so you can order with confidence.
The milkshake
Ice cream, milk, and whatever flavor you asked for, spun together on a spindle mixer until it is thick enough to need a straw and thin enough to get through one. That is the entire recipe. Ours are hand-dipped, which means the ice cream is scooped out of a tub to order, not squeezed out of a machine, and the difference is the whole reason people drive here for them.
The Flavor Board runs past twenty: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, coffee, loganberry, peanut butter, mint Oreo, creamsicle, and on. Combinations count. Chocolate peanut butter is a flavor. Banana split is a flavor. If the two things you want are both on the board, we can probably put them in the same cup.
The malt
A malt, or malted, is a milkshake with a couple of spoons of malted milk powder beaten in. Malted milk is made from barley that has been sprouted, dried, and ground, mixed with wheat flour and dried milk. It was invented in the 1880s as a food for infants and invalids, and then a soda jerk somewhere put it in a chocolate shake and it stopped being medicine.
What it does: it adds a toasty, slightly nutty, almost caramel note and a little more body. A chocolate malt tastes like a chocolate shake that went to college. It is the same $7.95 as a shake, and it is the version most people over sixty order without looking at the board.
The float
A float is not blended. It is a scoop or two of ice cream dropped into a tall glass of soda, and the fun is the reaction: the soda fizzes up through the ice cream, foams over the top, and gives you a drink that is half cold soda, half melting cream, and changes with every sip.
The classic is a root beer float, but a float can be any soda. Ours are made with Johnnie Ryan bottled soda from Niagara Falls: root beer, black cherry, cream, or orange. Orange soda with vanilla ice cream is a creamsicle in a glass. Black cherry with chocolate is a thing people get quiet about.
A shake is blended. A malt is blended with malt. A float is not blended at all.
Which one to order
| You want… | Order |
|---|---|
| Thick, cold, a straw and a spoon | Milkshake |
| Thick, cold, a little toasty, a little grown up | Malt |
| Fizzy, foamy, a spoon and a straw and a napkin | Float |
| Two of them, one price, on a Wednesday | Wednesday shakes |
The one question nobody asks but should
"Can I have it with breakfast?" Yes. We are a diner. A chocolate malt next to a plate of pancakes at nine in the morning is not a mistake. It is the most 1952 thing you can do in this building, and the full board is on the menu.