The corner building at 1960 Bayberry Avenue in Merrick has spent a long stretch as one of those spaces the neighborhood walks past and wonders about. As of Friday, August 14, it is wondering no more. Betty's Burgers & Ice Cream Bar held its grand opening that evening, and the premise is right there in the name: smashburgers on one side of the menu, oversized sundaes on the other, and a full bar in between.

Burgers up front, sundaes as the closing argument

The kitchen builds its burgers double stacked and smashed thin, the style where the patty picks up a crisp lacy edge on the griddle, layered with pickles, tomato and shredded lettuce. The other half of the concept is dessert as an event: sundaes constructed at a scale meant for the middle of the table, buried under whipped cream, the kind of thing ordered for a birthday and photographed before anyone touches it.

The room came out of the gate busy. The restaurant quietly seated its first dinner guests during a soft opening stretch beginning around August 8, nearly a week before the official ribbon, and by Sunday of its opening weekend its OpenTable page showed the reservation book filled more than thirty times in a single day. Early diners have been logging their verdicts there all week, and the recurring notes are the burgers, the sundaes and a staff visibly glad to have people in the room. The listing pegs dinner in the 31 to 50 dollar a head range, dress casual, with a phone line and online booking both live.

A corner with a history of almosts

Merrick has watched this address cycle through concepts. It operated as Anchor Down Seafood Bar & Grill, then rebranded as the Rabbit Hole Bar & Grill, which lasted less than a year under the new name before closing. Since then the corner has sat dark, a visible gap in a hamlet that does not have many of them.

A burger and ice cream concept is a different bet than either of its predecessors: lower stakes than a seafood house, broader than a gastropub, and aimed squarely at families rather than a bar crowd. The early hours reflect that. The schedule runs Tuesday through Sunday, dinner every open night, with the weekend adding full afternoons, noon to eleven on Saturday and noon to nine on Sunday, which is sundae territory as much as supper territory.

The beach shack thing is deliberate

The branding leans hard into surf culture, starting with the name: a Betty, in surf slang going back decades, is a woman who surfs. The tagline on the restaurant's own pages promises happiness arriving the way waves do, and the room follows the theme through to the sundae glasses. For a south shore hamlet whose kids grow up on Jones Beach, it is a costume that fits better than most, and it is exactly the kind of specific, committed identity the address's previous tenants never quite settled on.

Why this one is worth watching

Restaurant openings are routine, and this page does not cover most of them. What makes this one worth a reader's attention is the pairing. Plenty of places nearby will sell you a burger, and a handful will sell you ice cream, but a kitchen built to do both seriously, double stacked smashburgers on one end and party scale sundaes on the other, with a full bar for the adults at the table, is a genuinely uncommon shape for a neighborhood restaurant here. It is a family restaurant that does not feel like a compromise for anyone at the table, which is a harder trick than it sounds.

If you live nearby, the practical news is simple: the dark corner on Bayberry Avenue has lights on again, it takes reservations, and it is open for dinner six nights a week. The first month of a restaurant's life is when a neighborhood decides what it thinks. Merrick appears to have started deciding on night one.