What was the “Ice House” that I’ve heard old-timers talk about?
For nearly 60 years, the Old Ice House and its Girolametti family predecessors were among the few affordable family restaurants in town, gathering places of many old-timers and newcomers.
If you visited often enough, you could run across almost anyone you knew in town. At lunch you might have found a selectman dining with a state senator in one booth, several shoppers in another, and some office workers in the next. On a Friday, a group fresh from a senior citizens meeting might stop in, seated next to a table of garden clubbers and near a bunch of newspaper reporters and editors, discussing past and future stories.
At dinner you’d find a cross section of the town, from natives who knew they’d find good food at reasonable prices to young couples with children, for whom the Ice House was one of the few affordable family nights out.
Girolametti family businesses have been operating on the same land on Danbury Road since the turn of the last century, making it one of the oldest continuously family-owned commercial operations in Ridgefield. They still own the buildings holding a restaurant, shops, offices, and apartments on the property, now called Girolametti Court.
The Ice House grew out of a bar and grill, called Mary’s, opened in 1933 by Mario and Mary Girolametti (also spelled Girolmetti). In 1964, the Girolametti children built the RidgeBowl alleys and with it a bar and cocktail lounge. The lounge drew more than bowlers. In fact, following a lively school board or Board of Finance meeting, odds were you could find a friendly post-meeting group there, rehashing what happened, intermixed with the bowlers coming off league play.
Later, the Girolamettis expanded and redecorated the restaurant. John displayed many of the tools of his dad’s ice cutting trade — saws, auger bits, tongs, and such. The restaurant stood on the site of Mario Girolmetti’s sawdust-insulated ice house. There, blocks of ice cut from town ponds in winter were stored through spring, summer and fall, to be delivered to cool the town’s iceboxes in the days before refrigerators.
Eventually the family added cozy booths and custom-made tables. Many a deal — political and business — was worked out over those thick pine boards.
Bowling faded as a popular sport locally and in 1985 the alleys were closed and the space converted to offices. But the attached restaurant got busier as more Ridgefielders were drawn to its modest prices and good food — especially the family’s homemade ravioli and lasagna.
In fact, its popularity may have contributed to its end in the early 1990s. While the family declined comment at the time, the word was that the restaurant was so busy that it became a strain on the family to continue and still maintain the quality for which the Ice House had so long been known and loved. Today the spot is occupied by Mannen, which has been a popular Asian restaurant since 1996.—J.S.
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