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| - I grew up in Lakewood and as someone else said, all us Lakewood kids were down at Malleys all the time, getting ice cream to celebrate sports team victories, successful school band performances, opening nights of school plays, birthdays (it was always my dream to get my name on the "Happy Birthday" sign out front but never happened), and random family nights out. Even when we didn't go out to Malleys, my mom would often stop and pick up ice cream sodas in takeout cups plus a bag of pretzels for us all to share at home. And who can forget the ubiquitous Malleys Crunch bars that school kids sold for fundraisers? I'm sure I sold them once or twice and certainly consumed them on many more occasions. When I got a little older and moved away, there were the gift boxes of Malleys Candies that my parents would send to me as a little taste of home - the candy box assortment with a picture of Cleveland's skyline on the front; the crunch bars with the big Indians star of the moment on the wrapper (Albert Belle, maybe).
Malleys, especially this Malleys, is part of my history. It has persevered, and even kept (and kept up) the gorgeous Alice in Wonderland murals on the pink dining room walls, for about five decades now, long after other haunts of my youth (such as Malley's old competitors Helen Hutchleys and Ben Franklin ice cream on Detroit) have gone to the great memory bank in the sky. Even the menu has stayed pretty rock steady, so I can now enjoy a chocolate soda, chocolate phosphate or hot fudge sundae just like I did backintheday. Those three old standbys are particularly good here IMHO - the hot fudge is practically their signature dish. The prices for these goodies have gone up since the 70s (when a phosphate cost something like 35 cents) but not very much - you can still get ice cream for two or even three people for under 10 bucks, depending on what you order.
Upon entering the shop, to get to the old timey ice cream parlor, you must first walk through the chocolate shop, which is larger and more spacious than it used to be - fewer products, higher prices. While the ice cream is pretty inexpensive, the chocolates are considerably more pricey - to give you an idea, a foot-long roll of chocolate peppermint patties costs just under 20 dollars, and the gift boxes of chocolates (which currently tend to be just wrapped in pretty paper without so many of the "Cleveland" themes I remember from the past) usually run somewhere between 10 and 20 dollars. There is one wall of slightly less expensive small treats, like little bags of chocolate covered nuts for $3.50 and packaged peanut butter cups for a couple bucks, but most of the candy seems to be angling for the Godiva audience, and there is not as much variety in the candy selections, packages or price ranges as there used to be. Years ago they also used to carry a few gifty items like little stuffed animals, but they don't now - this is strictly a chocolate and ice cream parlor and most of the people stopping in are after the lower priced ice cream, especially since things like chocolate gift boxes can now be ordered online. I do wonder sometimes how long their chocolate in the shop sits, given the prices, but at the same time I can't recall ever having a "bad" piece of their candy.
Most of my experiences with Malleys have been very positive and happy ones. I'm glad it's around and will continue to stop by when I'm in town. I knocked off one star in view of the chocolate and shop selection (apart from ice cream) not being as great as when I was younger - it sometimes seems like there is empty space that they could fill with something else besides yet another gifty assortment, but they don't feel a need to be creative - and also because we've had one experience of a sundae (just a regular sundae, not any special treat) not being served in the expected tall glass, but instead in a flat banana split dish with minimal topping and about a half pound of whipped cream on the top. This didn't look or taste as good as the usual Malleys sundae - the dish seemed to keep the materials from blending as they do in the glass, and we almost sent it back, but decided to eat it. I don't know whether the dishwasher was out of tall glasses or what was going on, but in the future we will always make a point of requesting the tall glass when ordering a normal sundae.
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