Gene's Drive In - Bloomington

Great, long time, local ice-cream stop, conveniently located right on Main Street in Bloomington. Beautiful large selection of soft serve aromas. You also have swimmers, skakes, smoothies, chilidogs, bar-b-q, soda, sundaes and more. Political, polite and attentive staff. Nice family business.

In town for a volleyball tournament and came here after dinner. By far the creamiest ice we've ever had! The chocolate M

Seriously, her ice shouldn't be as good as it is. Your staff is much too friendly and efficient - as they were all done in a lab in Disney. No matter, 5 stars to Genes. I'll be back.

Great ice cream and a great place to take kids. You can cover ice cream with wrinkles with candy eyes, nose and tongue. The only thing is that there are no inside seats, but there are benches outside.

Review Date: September 9th, 2015 Gene’s is a sweet place to go. Another trip to Bloomington/Normal means another stop at an ice cream shack and another blog in a long string of ice cream shack posts. This one happened near the time ice cream shacks start to wind down for the season. As with most ice cream shacks, Gene’s is one of those small buildings that only offers outside seating. But, I do recall there being a drive-thru, which is not rare but somewhat uncommon for ice cream shacks. On this particular day, my girlfriend and I parked behind the building and walked around to the front to place an order. After looking over the relatively simple menu, I decided upon the strawberry shortcake sundae. Aside from peanut butter-flavored things, strawberry-flavored things are my go-to items when I order sweets. I don’t remember what my girlfriend ordered (maybe a banana split? but I know that it didn’t take long for our diabetes-in-a-cup order to be called out. As I said in the last paragraph, the menu is simple compared to other ice cream shacks. I suffer easily from choice paralysis, so the lack of a million options was a breath of fresh air. We hung out around the building as we chowed down (can you chow down ice cream? our snacks. Each bite was a bliss of strawberry heaven. After I finished off my sundae, I debated going back up and asking if they offered free refills. My girlfriend said I was being silly and too optimistic. So, I didn’t. But I did consider it for the comedic value. Any who, Gene’s was a treat to visit. The menu was simple and offered a lot while offering not a lot at the same time. The parking situation is different. You park behind the building and walk around to the front to place the order. You can pull around the building and use the drive-thru, but you have to order from your passenger side due to street directions, I believe. I don’t think I said this in all the other ice cream shack posts but a lot of these places are CASH ONLY, so make sure you have some just in case.