
Seattle’s ice cream season is temporary however superb (or it is all 12 months spherical, relying in your outlook on life). Listed below are our favorites across the metropolis. In case you’re extra into delicate serve, we have got that too.
Laina’s
Rainier Seashore
The household behind Rainier Seashore’s charming Stonehouse Cafe runs an ice cream counter throughout the restaurant, scooping flavors they make from scratch (even the bottom) in a manufacturing area subsequent door. And oh, these flavors. Some—lilikoi, a creamy pineapple, and the top-selling ube—honor familial ties to Hawaii and the Philippines. Others summon childhood favorites, like a Reese’s Items tribute and a tackle apple pie layered with chunks of precise crust. The lineup rotates usually, and a cooler subsequent to the counter is stocked with pints.

Shug’s
Pike Place Market, West Seattle
Although it debuted in 2016, this ice cream parlor on the First Avenue facet of Pike Place Market (with a mini satellite tv for pc in West Seattle) feels each inch a timeless establishment, from the egg lotions and cherry phosphates to the swinging row of stools earlier than a marble-topped soda fountain that dates again to the Nineteen Thirties. Lopez Island Creamery provides the 15-ish flavors—pretty on their very own, however even higher in certainly one of Shug’s elaborate sundaes.

Husky Deli
West Seattle
4 generations of the Miller household have churned ice cream at this West Seattle establishment, named not for his or her religious UW allegiance, however for little peanut-rolled ice cream concoctions ice cream patriarch Herman Miller would make again within the Nineteen Thirties. At this time, a formidable 40-odd flavors emerge from a pair of Emery Thompson ice cream machines within the again, scooped by upbeat native highschool college students into freshly made waffle cones. Flavors vary from classics (espresso, rocky street, butter toasted pecan) to Americana-tinged creativity (root beer, licorice, strawberry cheesecake). Each one is a testomony to the easy, astonishing powers of actually good elements, like identify model Nutella or berries straight from a Mount Vernon farm.
Molly Moon’s
Numerous places
The doyenne of Seattle’s trendy ice cream scene is equal components salted caramel and social accountability. A number of retailers (plus the occasional merchandising machine and retail pints) round city scoop staple flavors like honey lavender and melted chocolate, plus seasonals heavy on native elements. A dependable coconut-based taste and admirable vegan chocolate laborious shell topping imply even dairy-free guests can construct themselves a sundae.

Frankie and Jo’s
Ballard, Capitol Hill, College Village
Seattle’s mind-blowing plant-based ice cream retailers are the work of Juicebox veteran Kari Brunson and Scorching Desserts founder Autumn Martin. So is the lineup of scoops—loopy decadent, deeply flavored, and by no means a dietary comfort prize. Three plant-filled retailers serve coolly trendy flavors, like soiled horchata, or chocolate date, packing all of the richness of a roadside Southern California date milkshake. Sorbets like beet-strawberry-rose obtain related ranges of excellence, sans nut milks. Ice cream is available in a cup or miraculous gluten-free vanilla-maple waffle cone, able to be topped with issues like chocolate sauce or moon goo (a caramel sauce). Not too long ago pints landed in a number of native grocery shops (and a location opened in California). It bears repeating: The whole lot in right here is vegan and gluten free.
Bluebird Ice Cream
Phinney Ridge
Bluebird is each a scoop store on Phinney Ridge and a cooling presence at about 10 Seattle-area farmers markets, scoopin Elysian stout or Remlinger Farms marionberry from Sammamish to Queen Anne. In the meantime, the Phinney outpost dishes out scoops, like Bluebird’s ever-popular snickerdoodle taste, into freshly made waffle cones.

Creamy Cone Cafe
Rainier Seashore
Step inside this cheerful green-walled espresso and scoop store and three generations of proprietor Ashanti Mayfield’s household is perhaps ready to help. They may help you select amongst flavors that really feel basic, however not fundamental: espresso toffee crunch, watermelon sorbet, a wealthy vegan rocky street, and wow, that banana pudding. The primary topping is free for youths 12 and beneath. Creamy Cone even makes its personal waffle cones, a few of which get full of caramel and no-bake cheesecake for a transportable indulgence that isn’t fairly so melty.
Full Tilt Ice Cream
Columbia Metropolis
When founder Justin Cline handed away in March 2024, Seattle misplaced a gem of a human and a passionate advocate for small native enterprise. We additionally misplaced two of the three places of the ice cream and pinball store he based along with his spouse, Ann Magyar. The Columbia Metropolis location stays open (it’s owned by associates) and gives a spot to commune with the wonderful triad Cline constructed: pinball, plus beer, plus scoops in memorable flavors like Thai iced tea to Mexican chocolate, ube maple or lemon marshmallow.

Candy Alchemy
Ballard, Bellevue, Capitol Hill, College District
For a decade, Lois Ko operated the Häagen-Dazs throughout from her alma mater, the College of Washington. Now she runs her personal ice cream companies out of that very same area on the Ave, making her personal merchandise utilizing natural, largely hyperlocal elements and no emulsifiers (she even had the store state-certified as a creamery). Her rotating lineup, 70-odd flavors in complete, gives a refined kind of consolation—london fog, persian rose, banana Nutella crunch, or cookie explosion, a wealthy chocolate chunked with chocolate and a mind-bending 4 various kinds of cookie. Ko additionally makes a imply special-order ice cream cake.
Salt and Straw
Ballard, Capitol Hill, Totem Lake
Portland’s ice cream juggernaut landed in Seattle some time bacok; now a trio of native scoop retailers sling cerebrally scrumptious creations from the thoughts of taste savant Tyler Malek. Right here, a tangy Woodblock chocolate taste delivers a distinct expertise than the menu’s different chocolate ice cream, which mimics the nostalgia of brownies heat from the oven. Salt and Straw might have constructed its rep on extra fantastical flavors (sea urchin and baked potato double scoop, anybody?) however many of the month-to-month creations that rotate by way of the case apply Malek’s taste balancing expertise to extra accessible territory.
Mora Iced Creamery
Bainbridge Island
The 30-minute ferry to Bainbridge Island looks like a full-fledged getaway should you head straight to this wallpapered and wainscoted little ice cream store within the coronary heart of Winslow Means. Founders Jerry Perez and Ana Orselli, a husband-and-wife crew from Argentina, weave their ancestry throughout flavors like gianduja and dulce de leche (with or with out flecks of chocolate). However these are just some of the 40-ish flavors within the store’s repertoire, from cool sorbets to darkish chocolate mint. Mora, after all, is Spanish for “blackberry,” so it stands to cause the summer season fruit can be certainly one of its finest flavors. Humorous to assume this little Bainbridge gem now has franchised places in Washington and Nevada.
FogRose Atelier
Bellevue
A fantastical liquid nitrogen ice cream counter on the base of Soma Towers has graduated right into a full-on dessert lounge with cocktails and afternoon tea, even dinner. Ice cream nonetheless figures prominently, however now in a sit-down capability, and largely in high-concept compositions.

And a Few Nice Native Choices for Pints
Lopez Island Creamery
Kryse
Kryse Martin used to run the vivid flavors at Central District Ice Cream Firm. Now she has her personal line of pints, with new flavors launched every week for Sunday pickup on the Station espresso store on Beacon Hill. Flavors like brown sugar ube, orange thai basil, or banana pudding spiced with cardamom and cinnamon are inclined to promote out quick. In the meanwhile, Martin has paused her weekly pints, however you’ll be able to nonetheless discover Kryse ice cream on the dessert menu at a number of native eating places (together with Musang and Communion), and her Instagram shares information on festivals and particular occasions.
Pink’s Ice Cream
Snoqualmie Ice Cream
The corporate that makes the bottom for the overwhelming majority of Seattle ice creameries runs its personal scoop retailers in Snoqualmie and Maltby, however its pints populate just about each grocery retailer within the metropolis and it’s laborious to go incorrect. Familiars (cookies and cream, salted caramel) share freezer shelf area with tempting taste flexes like s’mores or a creation impressed by bourbon.
