Ice Cream

Places

Good places to get ice cream.

• Fenton’s Creamery in Oakland (map)

  

  

• Ghiradelli in SF
• Smitten

  Not sure how much this place exists anymore. A lot of its locations seemed to have struggled and closed.

  Smitten's somewhat unique for their ice cream that’s made with liquid nitrogen on demand. The idea is that making the ice cream right then makes the ice cream have fewer ice crystals, making the ice cream itself a lot smoother.

• Tillamook Creamery in Oregon (map)

  Did an ice cream tasting here. Did you know that ice cream testers will cut a pint of ice cream down the middle to check the swirl of ice cream inside? I didn’t until I came here. Another thing I learned was to store ice cream pints upside down. And another thing is that their workers tend to prefer the peaches and cream ice cream flavor.

• Ici Ice Cream in Berkeley

  Closed now, as far as I know. They used to have different ice cream flavors like every day. There used to be a pretty long line for it.

• Salt & Straw

  Pretty popular chain that has interesting flavors. They’re originally from Portland, but they have a couple locations in SF. There’s one in Hayes Valley and one on Fillmore.

• Baskin-Robbins

  Had this a few times as a kid.

  They have a ton of Baskin-Robbins in South Korea, and I don’t know why but the quality there is way higher than in the US.

• There’s a gelato lab in New York that’s like right across from Katz’s Deli
• Joe’s Ice Cream in SF

  Korean American place that also has food. I usually get their bulgogi beef burger, but I think I remember their ice cream being good too.

• Mitchell’s Ice Cream (map) in SF

  They’ve got some Filipino flavors like halo-halo. Also have some pretty good ice cream cakes. Line gets long sometimes.

  Need to add pictures from 2023-11-27.

• Vic’s Ice Cream (map) in Sacramento

  Cool old-style soda bar or whatever-you-call-it. Has “phosphates” (which were an old kind of soda).

  Need to add photos from 2024-02-18.

• Nimble & Finn’s ice cream (map) in Santa Rosa

  They’ve got ice cream cocktails, which were pretty decent. Nice ambiance. Dunno about the ice cream by itself though.

Haven’t been to

Places I haven’t been to but are on my list for some reason.

• Gunther’s Ice Cream (map) in Sacramento

  I think this was recommended by a friend living in Sacramento in February 2024.

Miscellaneous

• Choco tacos

  Choco tacos used to be one of my favorite ice creams to get at 7-Eleven. Sadly they’ve stopped making them.

• Its-It

  I used to eat Its-It ice cream sandwiches all the time in college when pulling all-nighters, for some reason.

  Also, Its-It is from SF, though their factory is somewhere on the Peninsula. You pass it driving up 101. I haven’t been to their factory, but my partner has. They basically have a shop there that also has some different Its-It flavors. They’re also sold at a discount there.

• Dreyer’s

  My partner hates them for some reason. Or is it Breyer’s? Why do two ice cream companies have similar names? I don’t know, but I do know she hates one of them, for reasons I do not know.