About this listing
Italian ices have been sold here for over 60 years
Place Details
Borough : Queens
Neighborhood : Corona
Place Matters Profile
By Caitlin Van Dusen
The Lemon Ice King of Corona has been delighting taste buds since 1944. A favorite citywide, the shop inspires loyalty from patrons and employees, and retains a unique ambiance.
You don’t get to be the Lemon Ice King of Corona just by making ices. One has to possess a certain savoir faire to wear the crown--even if your crown is a worn cotton cap and your palace a glassed-in corner shop in Queens, nestled between an Italian pork store and Classic Dental Spa, with “Emergencies Welcome” scripted on its awning.
Peter Benfaremo, or “Pete,” as he is affectionately called by his fans and staff, has been in the ice business since he came out of the army, in 1945; his father, a bricklayer by trade, had started the business only a year earlier. The shop used to be next door, smaller, and they hand-cranked the ice in tubs. According to Pete, the Board of Health won’t allow that now,
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By Caitlin Van Dusen
The Lemon Ice King of Corona has been delighting taste buds since 1944. A favorite citywide, the shop inspires loyalty from patrons and employees, and retains a unique ambiance.
You don’t get to be the Lemon Ice King of Corona just by making ices. One has to possess a certain savoir faire to wear the crown--even if your crown is a worn cotton cap and your palace a glassed-in corner shop in Queens, nestled between an Italian pork store and Classic Dental Spa, with “Emergencies Welcome” scripted on its awning.
Peter Benfaremo, or “Pete,” as he is affectionately called by his fans and staff, has been in the ice business since he came out of the army, in 1945; his father, a bricklayer by trade, had started the business only a year earlier. The shop used to be next door, smaller, and they hand-cranked the ice in tubs. According to Pete, the Board of Health won’t allow that now, and he makes all 25 flavors electrically. Lemon, of course, is the perennial favorite, with peanut butter (studded with real peanuts) a close second. Lemon, chocolate, and orange ices are also offered in a sugar-free variety, one of the many accommodations Pete has made to changing times. But his recipe remains classic: sugar, water, and flavoring. The Benfaremos used to sell ices only in the summer, but now they do a brisk year-round business, though of course it’s notably slower in cold weather.
As a boss, Pete is as curmudgeonly as they come, and by the nature of the business his staff appears and disappears as quickly as a lemon ice. But they’re as loyal as his patrons, and some even send their children back to get a taste not only of the ices but of working for the King himself. “I love you, Pete,” chimes a counterboy. “This guy’s like a father to me.”
And as a proprietor, Pete insists on a few unbreakable rules. Few things can oust Pete from his chair, eyes ablaze, like an unwitting customer asking for a “scoop”--or, worse, two scoops in the same cup. “We don’t scoop! We shovel! You can’t mix! Why would you want to mix it? The second scoop is going to get all messy from the first flavor. You don’t like it? Screw you! Too bad. Look at the sign!” He hurls an emphatic finger toward the hand-painted sign: WE DO NOT MIX OR EXHANGE ICES. Pete clarifies, “We don’t use what you think that we use when we put it in the cup. Our manner of giving out the flavors is different.” He demonstrates by grabbing a paper cup, wrenching open a freezer door, and plunging his arm deep into the frost-smoky depths. It reemerges bearing a metal paddle; there’s a separate shovel for each flavor. With rhythmic thrusts of his shoulder, he works the ice to loosen it, kneading it like a potter warming up his clay. Then, with a turn of the elbow, he lifts a thick curl of ice onto the paddle, swabs it across the opening of the cup, then plunges it in again. He drops the second shovelful on top and curls it around itself with a flick of the wrist, making a “hood.” It is in the merging of the first and second scoops in the hood that the blasphemous flavor-mixing is bound to occur.
Pete presents the dainty cup between his thumb and forefinger, proud but spent. These days, the kids do most of the shoveling--and most of the tireless, patient explaining that retains the Lemon Ice King’s untarnished integrity. On the other side of the order window, a head queries, “Could I get a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of peanut butter?” Pete grips the edges of his chair, poised for the inevitable confrontation. “We don’t mix,” the counterboy explains, gently but firmly. “Oh.” A puzzled pause. “Well, then let me have one of each.” Pete relaxes his grip on the chair, another battle won in the name of authentic ice.
For years, customers have been enjoying their ices in William E. Moore Park, just across the street from the Corona shop, which boasts, along with the requisite benches, 9/11 memorial plaque, and struggling trees, an authentic bocce court. The park is also known as Spaghetti Park. On summer days, bystanders can watch the local Italian men playing bocce, keeping score with pins on a wooden board painted red, white, and green. The court is festooned with paper lanterns, and a set of shiny grills has been set up nearby. A nearby tree bears a cross and an ever-changing array of testimonials to the neighborhood’s latest dearly departed. Men hunch over the chess table tops, savoring sandwiches from the salumeria across the street (the sign boasts a king of its own: “The King of Italian Specialties”). Indeed, saturated in a memory-making Corona flavor of food and fun, the park has become a requisite part of the lemon ice-eating experience. (Search the Census for “Spaghetti Park” to learn more.)
The Lemon Ice King’s Empire
Ices are not the only product Pete sells: At a certain point he decided candy apples might add an extra bite to his business. First-time visitors might be surprised to note that the glass windows of the Lemon Ice King shop are decorated not with pictures of ices or a roster of flavors, but with tidy glass boxes housing rows of candy apples in bright red and green, some dusted with nuts or coconut. But only the nine apples that frame the order window are actually edible; the others are decoys. “They’re made of wood!” Pete exults with his trademark mischievous grin. “Crazy people buy them.” In addition to the apples, the shelves along the inside of the store are lined with large glass jars of nuts, and a vase holding a dusty bouquet of American flags and pinwheels. Pete brushes their presence aside as he might a hovering mosquito on a sticky summer day, dismissing them as grudging platitudes to the unpredictable allegiances of his clientele.
In another concession to his customers’ palates, the Lemon Ice King opened an outpost in Pennsylvania Station not too long ago: one stand at each end of the Long Island Railroad concourse, both consisting of a plain freezer case with a plastic sign above it, and both fenced in by a soft pretzel rack and a popcorn stand. Their clientele consists of harried commuters looking for a portable train-ride snack, rather than the lazy summer locals dawdling on the Corona street corner, reminiscing about ices past. As royal as he may be, Pete is, after all, a businessman. “Now they’re so many people making ices, there’s one on every corner. Every candy store, every pizza parlor, hot dog stand, they all got ice!” Yet he scoffs at his loyalists, who insist the Penn Station ices “aren’t like home”: “Why not? We sell it all over, California, Florida. Everyone wants to buy it. What are we in business for?” The price list for ices ranges from $1 for the smallest paper cup to $24 for the multi-gallon metal vats that ship regularly across the United States. In short, business is thriving.
Pete cites his accolades with a pride dampened only by years of being able to take it for granted. He admits he has boxes of articles at home, claims that people come to interview him every other day. Most recently, his Corona shop was, appropriately, featured in the opening credits of the sitcom The King of Queens. “You know, when you’re known, you’re known.” Then he qualifies this with the Benfaremo Mantra: “Listen, nobody can tell the future. There are only two things that are sure in this world: that’s death and taxes. I mean, what do I care? I’m 81 years old, what am I going to complain? I’m here.”
