Elizabeth B.
Yelp
At least it says shave ice here. Don't come from the snowball you used to get. And they take credit cards now, which is necessary because you'll easily spend $35 for your family of four.
I sent this message to the owners, just a little glimpse of how bad it is.
"What have you done? Century old snowballs. Yes, that happened. But tonight I got shaved ice. I had a chemical tasting fancy bottled rootbeer flavor with tiniest scoop of solid marshmallow. New residents, like yourselves, may like this but no local will. I grew up eating here. Tonight I spent $6 on something smaller than the old small, with chemical flavor on shaved ice and that dollop of organic marshmallow. Insider tips, shaved ice isn't the same as snowball ice, no one cares about organic and artisanal flavors when it's price prohibitive, you need a microscope to find the actual product, and it tastes horrible. Oh, and the shaved ice. I don't care if your new name is on the cup. The wooden spoon three times the size of the cup is a horrible choice. Making "The Hon", a true piece of a Baltimore summer with shaved ice, $2 for I'm sure the tiniest scoop of ice cream, chemically tasting syrup (chocolate for "the hon' and a solid fan of marshmallow,.an additional $1.50 is the worst thing you could do to that place. I am heartbroken and my family, after tonight, will no longer go there (my parents starting coming in the 1960s). Maybe the new also out of town residents will pay your hideous prices for you obnoxiously small portions with below mediocre taste. And maybe that's good enough for you. But SHAME ON YOU for pushing away people who have been loyal and frequent customers for, in many cases, 3 generations. I will tell every person I know who enjoyed Walther Gardens Snowballs to find a new place. I wouldn't even mention the price if the quality was half of what it used to be. Sadly it's at about 2% of what it once was. How dare you mess with a century of success!? You might want to look up Cafe Hon, how great it was, how a single owner who knew better than tradition, destroyed the place and insulted the city only to have Gordon Ramsay shout some sense into her. And where is it now? Nowhere. It's gone. Because a new owner came around, changed things, and was sure she knew better than decades of success and local customers. I grieve the loss of Cafe Hon chicken salad with Old Bay and Utz on the side, and now I also grieve the loss of Walther Gardens Sno-balls in Styrofoam cups that you'd chew apart to get every last drop of the amazing gooey marshmallow, chocolate, with ice cream and marshmallow."