“Going to the Newburgh waterfront is often an expensive extravaganza, and not everyone has the means, so sometimes it can feel like the waterfront isn’t for everyone—but it is,” says Philippe Pierre, local resident, landlord, and entrepreneur. Pierre, with his wife, Ellen Sigunick, and their business partners own several buildings throughout the city and also are partners in Mama Roux and Ms. Fairfax.
When their waterfront property, previously home to Craft Draft bar, lost its tenant due to pandemic hardships, the partners were faced with an empty space and an open question. “We were playing around with different tenants that were interested when I looked at Ellen and said, ‘Well, we’ve always wanted to do ice cream. What about ice cream on the waterfront?’ It seemed like a plausible idea,” says Pierre.
They’d been nursing this back pocket dream ever since R&D for Mama Roux took them down to the Louisiana town of Lafayette for the Blackpot food and music festival. The town has a small ice cream parlor, where the owners, who trained at an ice cream boot camp in Italy, churn out the homemade stuff of dreams.
So last summer on July 4th weekend, Pierre and Sigunick threw open the doors to Midnight Ferry Ice Cream on the Newburgh waterfront, named for the late-night boat that once took merrymakers across the Hudson. “This is an attempt at making it welcoming for everyone to come down to the waterfront and have a treat,” Pierre says. “We’re right next to this pier that juts out. People come with their family or on a date, and they go out to the pier. It’s beautiful with Bannerman in the background, Storm King, and Breakneck. It’s a pretty special vantage point.”
They’re not making their own ice cream yet, but Pierre says that it’s “definitely on the vision board, super high up there.” In the meantime, Midnight Ferry sources hard ice cream from Gifford’s in Maine, while the soft serve comes from Gardiner-based Gillette Creamery. Sorbets and gelato are from an Italian company. What is made in-house are the gourmet toppings like the chocolate sauce, cardamom caramel sauce, pistachio brittle, and shortbread crumble. They are also producing the chocolate cookies for their (customizable) ice cream sandwiches as well as the cinnamon waffle cones for ice cream tacos, which are filled with soft-serve, dipped in chocolate, and sold in a shareable two-pack.
If you want the house specialty, spring for the bomba. Think fluffy, Italian pastry pillow stuffed with two scoops of your choice of ice cream or gelato and then finished in the panini press. Yes, it’s hot on the outside and cold on the inside.
Ice Cream Over the Hudson
Midnight Ferry has been abuzz recently, with the early May opening of their 20-foot trailer on Walkway over the Hudson. They’ve launched with soft-serve and smoothies with grab-and-go sandwiches and salads coming this summer. “It’s a great opportunity, and it’s nice to be able to provide a treat for folks,” Pierre says. “The Walkway has been great, with lots of enthusiasm from the staff, visitors, and volunteers. Our dairy-free options are really popular, such as our oat-based Lavender soft-serve and smoothies.”
These grab-and-go options will also make their way to the Newburgh location, rounding out the offerings, alongside the espresso program that is launching this week. “There’s not a whole lot of reasonably quick, easy lunch or coffee options on the waterfront, so we’re trying to make ourselves a little outpost.”
Midnight Ferry is also working with Newburgh-based set production and custom fabrication company Murmuration Inc. to build out the back side of their building to create a 25-seat patio on the waterfront and a sit-down, indoor dessert bar with sweet treats like key lime pie, cheesecake, and torta della nonna, along with frozen takes on cocktails like bellinis and espresso martinis.
“They’ve been building this whole world in the cafe that is going to be like a fairytale terminal kind of vibe,” Pierre says of Murmuration, whose portfolio of clients includes Bacardi, Nike, AmEx, and Lego. “We basically just said, ‘Here is this box, can you turn it into a fantasy land?’ It’s going to be a bit of a step back in time with vintage glassware. Not really 1950s ice cream parlor vibes, more transportation-based. Kind of like that restaurant in Grand Central but really small—and without the oysters.”
In the meantime, you can head to Midnight Ferry (in either location) and order a cone or a coffee from the window while you stroll and enjoy the river views. “I'm in the real estate business and the restaurant business, and ice cream is just the best,” Pierre says. “You’re handing people joy, and it’s just very gratifying.”
