Ben & Bill's Chocolate Emporium

Chocolate, fudge and a lobster scoop

The cases at Ben & Bill's Chocolate Emporium are candy first: house-made chocolates, fudge in several flavours, brittles and hard-serve ice cream, with no bread, viennoiserie or plated dessert anywhere in sight. It is a New England confectionery line that began on Martha's Vineyard and carried into downtown Bar Harbor, and the Maine shop keeps the old-fashioned sweet-shop format intact.

The order that made the shop known well beyond Mount Desert Island is lobster ice cream, a butter-based scoop with pieces of lobster folded through it. It is not a novelty pinned to the wall; it is on the board with everything else, and people order it. In summer the frozen side can run to as many as seventy-two flavours across ice cream, gelato, frozen yogurt and sorbet.

The queue moves along the cases

The visit is counter-service retail: come in, work along the glass cases, choose candy, fudge, brittle or a scoop, then take it away. The shop sits in the downtown pedestrian corridor near the gateway to Acadia National Park, which makes it part of the town's summer foot traffic rather than a destination on its own.

The cases do the work. Tubs of ice cream on the frozen side, trays of chocolate and slabs of fudge on the confectionery side, and enough choice in high season that the line can stall while people compare. It is a busy, family-heavy room with an old parlour feel rather than a quiet one, and the queue is part of the experience in July and August.

Take a scoop, then a slab of fudge

Start with ice cream, because the scale of the frozen menu is the clearest signature the Bar Harbor shop has. Lobster ice cream is the one to try at least once, and the rest of the hard-serve, gelato, frozen yogurt and sorbet lineup covers anyone who would rather not.

Then move to fudge, the shareable, portable half of the shop's identity and made in house in several flavours. The chocolates are the other natural second order, better suited to buying a few pieces than a full box. Brittles sit in the same traditional lane, adding a crisp confection beside the softer fudge. The strongest order is not a pastry order at all: one frozen choice, one from the candy case, and no expectation of laminated dough.