Located at the intersection of Madison and S. Ashley, just west of Main Street, Washtenaw serves Stroh's Mooney's ice cream and has good milkshakes and cones for reasonable prices. They give you servings which are large in comparison with the stated sizes. It's a great place to go after a Michigan Football game or a neighborhood stroll. Its proximity to Pioneer High School makes it a good spot for high schoolers, too.

Its Superman ice cream is prized by many, especially children, but it is the coffee and "donuts" that bring in a crowd of regulars on weekday mornings. Its hand-dipped milkshakes are fantastic and the "Boston Cooler"--made with Vernor's that, ironically is not available in Boston!--is especially refreshing.

Washtenaw Dairy sells dry ice, frozen carbon dioxide that is used for supplemental or emergency cooling.

In the news

• Ann Arbor's Washtenaw Dairy marks 75 years as a neighborhood gathering place, Michael Hodges for the Detroit News, June 2009

Open every day but Christmas, the Washtenaw Dairy at 602 S. Ashley St. is a remarkable constant in Ann Arbor life -- and a longstanding one, at that. The ice-cream and doughnut emporium celebrates its 75th anniversary all this year. Tucked on a corner behind an unpretentious cement facade and surrounded by clapboard homes, the dairy has for generations been the defining element in its turn-of-the-century neighborhood -- a vestige, if you will, of an older America, before modern zoning codes banned businesses in residential areas.