Must-visit ice cream parlors in the United States

When Jennifer Rodammer goes on a trip, there’s a good chance ice cream will be involved.

Rodammer is creamery director at the University of Delaware UDairy Creamery, which serves ice cream at two brick-and-mortar locations, and she is serious about scoops.

“My friends and family know what I do for a living,” she said. “Usually if I visit, they’re like, ‘I found this creamery, we have to go.’”

The Washington Post contacted ice cream experts and superfans for their suggestions of travel-worthy ice cream. Well-known shops with a national presence - either in large chain parlors or grocery stores - were not considered.

While we always enjoy a scoop of Jeni’s, Van Leeuwen, Graeter’s or McConnell’s, you probably don’t have to go far to find them, at least in pint form. We wanted places that represent their locations and require a trip to experience. These are seven deserving of a visit.

Wild Scoops, Anchorage

The focus is on local ingredients at Wild Scoops - and since this is in Alaska, those ingredients include fireweed, birch syrup and spruce tips. Ice cream made from the latter “tastes like a walk in the forest,” said Elissa Brown, who founded the company with her husband, Chris Pike, 11 years ago.

Originally a “little farmers market freezer on wheels,” as Brown described its origins, Wild Scoops now has three shops open in the summer, with one of those staying open year-round. The 10 to 16 in-house flavors change regularly, but one classic is Sitka Swirl, sweet cream with a salted caramel swirl using salt harvested by hand from Sitka.

Zoe Denenberg, a chef and food writer who works half the year as the executive chef at Camp Denali, a lodge inside Denali National Park and Preserve, said she always makes a few visits to Wild Scoops when she passes through Anchorage.

“On a recent trip to Anchorage, I went to Wild Scoops twice, once before dinner,” she wrote in an email.

Tip: The midtown spot is open year-round, while two downtown locations close in August and September.

Don’t miss: Whatever your scoop choice, get it in the Baked Alaska cone. A homemade waffle cone is topped with homemade marshmallow fluff, then torched.

Also check out: Brown praises the area’s mountain biking trails and Little O’Malley Peak Trail for hiking. If the weather isn’t great for being outdoors, she called the Anchorage Museum a “great cultural gem.”

Screamin’ Mimi’s, Sebastopol, California

Maraline Mazzetti Olson was making ice cream at home in Sonoma County more than three decades ago when she came up with an espresso-based flavor with chocolate chips, crushed chocolate cookies and homemade fudge. She gave her husband a sample.

His reply: “I think you’ve got to look into opening an ice cream shop.”

That flavor is now known as Mimi’s Mud, and it never runs out at Screamin’ Mimi’s, which celebrated 30 years of operation last year. The shop offers 16 ice cream flavors, most of which vary daily based on what’s in season, and eight dairy-free options. Look for flavors such as lavender and crane melon in the summer, and spumoni in December.

“I love ice cream, I love creating ice cream. … I love seeing people enjoy what I made,” Mazzetti Olson said. “I want to be the shop that people say, ‘Oh, you’re going to Northern California? Drive out of your way to go to Sebastopol.’”

Ice cream author and consultant Malcolm Stogo, founder of Ice Cream University, called Screamin’ Mimi’s “very consistent and across-the-board great.”

Tip: Parking is scarce, and the shop’s interior is small, so lines can spill out the door. Mazzetti Olson urges visitors not to be discouraged. “The line moves so fast,” she said.

Don’t miss: Mimi’s Mud, the flavor that started it all and outsells the rest.

Also check out: A three-block stretch of Florence Avenue in Sebastopol showcases multiple scrap metal sculptures by married artists Patrick Amiot and Brigitte Laurent.

“It’s magical, it is my favorite thing,” Mazzetti Olson said.

Moomers, Traverse City, Michigan

Come for the ice cream, stay for the view of cows and pastures at Moomers Homemade Ice Cream, a family-owned parlor in Northern Michigan.

Befitting a place famous for its cherry orchards, Moomers boasts multiple cherry options on its website. While the shop makes more than 100 flavors, expect to see a little more than 20 on display every day, with a few each in chocolate, fruit, candy and kid-favorite categories.

Jon Plummer, whose parents, Bob and Nancy, started Moomers on the family’s dairy farm, now owns it with his sister Becky Mead. He said they are “always experimenting with flavors,” even running a contest in the fall where staff members create their own concoctions, and customers vote on their favorite (and least favorite).

Moomers, named after Nancy Plummer’s nickname for baby cows, shuts down its retail business in January and February, opening the first Friday of March.

Tip: Can’t choose? Try five flavors with the ice cream flight.

“There’s folks who will share that and definitely folks who won’t even let you look at theirs,” Plummer said.

Don’t miss: The most popular flavor is Cherries Moobilee, black cherry ice cream with chunks of brownies, black sweet cherries and a chocolate fudge swirl.

Also check out: Plummer recommends swimming in Grand Traverse Bay and visiting the “gorgeous” Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore for canoeing and biking.

Betty Rae’s, Kansas City, Missouri

In her quest to see all 50 states, travel adviser and ice cream enthusiast Jamie Italiane-DeCubellis visited Kansas City and found her favorite scoops in town at Betty Rae’s. She highlighted one flavor with lavender and another with goat cheese, apricots and candied walnuts.

“I like ice cream with interesting flavors,” she said.

Betty Rae’s, which has a dozen shops in the area and four franchise locations in Kansas and Nebraska, is a fan of interesting, including a savory barbecue variety for a brief spell each summer.

Find year-round staples such as cookies and cream, and discover others that rotate seasonally or in step with special events. When Kansas City hosted World Cup games in June and July, Betty Rae’s rolled out eight flavors in celebration of teams playing or staying in the city including London Fog, Dutch stroopwafels and Argentine alfajores.

“We really tried to do as good as we could to mimic those flavor profiles that those communities are known for,” said owner Matt Shatto.

Tip: Shatto suggests visiting when it’s not too busy - shoot for earlier than 6 p.m. - and making time to sample the flavors. “Just come willing to try everything,” he said.

Don’t miss: The Gooey Butter Cake is a customer favorite, swirled with butterscotch and bits of the cake that originated in St. Louis.

Also check out: The Rock Island Bridge, which calls itself “America’s first entertainment district on a bridge,” opened in Kansas City earlier this year. The formerly unused railroad bridge stretching across the Kansas River is now home to restaurants, patios and event space.

Big Spoon Creamery, Birmingham, Alabama

Owners Ryan and Geri-Martha O’Hara met while working in fine dining and started their ice cream business with a cart, then truck, before opening their first brick-and-mortar shop in Birmingham in 2017.

Now with three locations in the Birmingham area and Huntsville, they take a fine-dining approach to their artisan ice cream, using high-end, local ingredients and changing the menu frequently. The current lineup includes bourbon peach pecan crisp, blueberry yogurt and blackberry cobbler.

“I think now guests are trained to be excited for what’s next,” Ryan O’Hara said. “That’s kind of the fun of Big Spoon: You can come every month, and there’s always going to be something new to try.”

Denenberg, who worked in the Big Spoon pastry kitchen baking mix-ins for the ice cream in 2020, said her “deep love for ice cream” traces back to the shop.

“It’s the only ice cream shop that I still dream about often (if you’ve never had ice cream straight from the machine, it is life-changing) and would go out of my way to travel to,” she said in an email.

Tip: Is lactose your enemy? Big Spoon has Lactaid pills available at the counter for customers who dare not indulge without it.

Don’t miss: Seasonal favorites such as peach buttermilk in summer, and goat cheese, strawberry and hibiscus in the spring.

Also check out: O’Hara calls Birmingham an incredible and underrated food city. He recommends Bottega and Chez Fonfon from James Beard Award-winning chef Frank Stitt, both places where he once worked.

Tizzy K’s Cereal Ice Cream, Providence, Rhode Island

A Netflix documentary series episode on Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi, pioneer of ice cream with a cereal milk base, inspired Tess “Tizzy” Sullivan and her now-fiancé, Kelly Ireland, to take a trip from Massachusetts to New York City several years ago. They sampled the cornflake-flavored ice cream at Milk Bar. They wanted more options - so Sullivan started experimenting. The couple started selling their ice cream from a bike cart in late 2019.

These days, with three Tizzy K’s ice cream shops in and around Providence that serve flavors entirely based on cereal, Sullivan has to do some serious shopping.

“I literally travel to 15 Walmarts a week, and I buy out every single bag and box of cereal,” she said. She and her employees steep the cereal in heavy cream, strain the pieces out and use the base to make scoopable hard ice cream.

Tizzy K’s shops serve five or six flavors that change daily, including a secret one. Scoops are garnished with cereal crunch and a Rice Krispies treat.

“All things cereal, basically,” said Sullivan.

Rodammer happened across Tizzy K’s during a visit to Providence, and it made an impression.

“It’s super rich, which I think is what I look for when I go places, a really elevated product,” she said.

Tip: Every day, customers can try a flavor that is off the menu, maybe something the shop is trying out or introducing.

“People have fallen in love with guessing the secret flavor,” Sullivan said.

Don’t miss: Golden Grahams was the first cereal Sullivan used to make ice cream, and she said it’s still the flavor she recommends to everyone.

Also check out: WaterFire, an art installation originally created in 1994 by artist Barnaby Evans, lights up city rivers and draws visitors, musicians and vendors on certain nights in Providence between May and November.

Happy Ice Cream, D.C.

Post food critic Elazar Sontag wrote last year that this - part of the natural wine and pasta restaurant Gemini - “may well be the best ice cream shop in America.”

Happy Ice Cream in the Dupont Circle neighborhood serves handmade, small-batch scoops indoors or from a cart outdoors Tuesday through Friday, depending on the time, and outdoors all day Saturday. Pints are available inside all day Tuesday through Saturday.

Co-owner Anne Marler said in an email that every part is made in-house in “the slowest, most labor-intensive way possible,” including cones that originate from a 20-year-old sourdough starter. The shop scoops four flavors, which rotate daily and can be found on the Happy Ice Cream Instagram account’s stories. Greatest hits include olive oil with cocoa crumble, and fig leaf and black raspberry swirl.

Ben Brunner, whom Marler called the “ice cream mastermind,” was a sous chef at the Michelin-starred Komi in the same space, which continues to share a core team with the current iteration.

Don’t miss: If you time it right, try to catch the extremely limited release of cantaloupe sorbet: “We wait for this flavor all year long, and then we savor it while we have it, and then it’s gone,” Marler said.

Tip: Show up around opening time to avoid long waits, Marler said. Lines grow at the end of the night.

“Even if we might sell out of cones and certain flavors as the night goes on, as long as you’re in line by the time we close, you’re getting ice cream!” she said.

Also check out: Marler calls the Phillips Collection, an art museum also in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, “refreshingly off-the-beaten tourist path.” She also recommends the “truly singular cookbook shop” Bold Fork Books.

For food and drinks beyond Gemini, Marler suggests the lauded Izakaya Seki, Meat & Foods and All Souls Bar.