Where to Find Portland’s Best Ice Cream
Pinolo’s creamy pistachio gelato.
Like the city’s larger food scene, Portland’s ice cream options expand far beyond the typical scoop shop, and each has its own distinct identity. Got an Italian nonna who likes to stick with the classics? Take her to Pinolo Gelato for pistachio and stracciatella. Looking for silky soft serve and inventive sundaes? Wander over to Cheese & Crack. Want to try a bona fide Portland institution, still innovating today? Brave the lines at Salt & Straw. If you’re plant-based, gluten-free, or lactose-intolerant, Kate’s Ice Cream is a safe haven, though so are many of Portland’s other ice cream shops. Through lines include Oregon-made mix-ins, seasonal flavor inspirations, and a willingness to push against conventional ice cream wisdom.
Cheese & Crack Snack Shop
kerns
When owner William Steuernagel moved his cheese and crackers food cart into its permanent brick-and-mortar space a decade ago, soft serve was little more than an afterthought. Now, despite the shop’s name, you’re probably here for the soft serve (or maybe some frosé and butter crackers). There’s just the one flavor, vanilla, but it’s gussied up in a variety of sundaes: banana pudding with Nilla Wafers, a signature s’mores number with chocolate ganache and toasted marshmallow topping, and a rotating seasonal special. You can also get the soft serve stacked atop a ganache-lined cone and liberally coated with a choice of “dust,” like beet, chocolate, or matcha powder.
Cornet Custard
richmond
Pastry chef extraordinaire Mika Paredes’s frozen custard shop (don’t call it ice cream) began as a side project in the late chef Naomi Pomeroy’s Ripe Cooperative. In its SE Division St. location, the custard shop carries on the restaurant’s high standard for quality ingredients and seasonal produce. The key to Cornet’s custard? A high concentration of egg yolks. They make the custard stiff and rich, and because the structure comes from eggs rather than sugar, the resulting treat is a little less sweet than you’ll find at other shops. Act quickly when you find a favorite flavor: Varieties, mostly rooted in nostalgia, change every few weeks, from blood orange dreamsicle to strawberry shortcake.
Cloud City
Woodstock
While Cloud City gets its tricks in, it leans more nostalgic than the rest of Portland’s inventive ice cream scene. It looks and feels a bit like someone bought an old Baskin-Robbins and made the ice cream better, without changing much else. The sea salt cookie dough offers more dough than delightfully simple sweet cream base. The aptly named Better Than Therapy combines bright, tangy lemon curd with gluten-free ginger cookies. But our all-time favorite is the marionberry crisp, a mascarpone base with a berry swirl and gluten-free oat clusters.
Eb & Bean
irvington, northwest district, Richmond
This is the alternative to the floodlit, mass-produced feel of most fro-yo shops—the yogurt here is organic and the vegan alternatives are plentiful. Try the chocolate bourbon pecan, strawberries and cream, or the dairy-free salty pistachio, but remember that fro-yo is all about the toppings, and here they come carefully curated. No banal shower of off-the-shelf sprinkles; instead, find flaky macaron shells, crunchy praline peanuts, strawberry “pearls,” and butter toffee crumble.
A trio of flavors from Fifty Licks.
Fifty Licks
Hosford-Abernethy, METZGER, NORTHWEST DISTRICT
This Portland mini-chain gets a lot of credit for being especially friendly to vegans, the gluten-free, and those with myriad other dietary restrictions that one might not generally associate with an ice cream shop. Fortunately, zero is sacrificed in taste: Nothing is overly sweet or cloying. Flavors change with the seasons, but you can always count on finding the rich, custardy yet somehow vegan mango sticky rice flavor and the get-down-to-business Chocolate AF with its chunks of ganache. Fifty Licks has a location in Slabtown, on SE Clinton Street, and as a pop-up at Washington Square Mall, but its flagship spot on East Burnside is still closed due a fire in 2024, and likely won’t reopen for a few more years.
Chocolate drips from one of Ice Queen’s decadent paletas.
Ice Queen
hosford-abernethy
If you’ve had Ice Queen’s signature paletas from a retailer around town, stop by the brick-and-mortar for an expanded range of the high-end Mexican popsicles, plus vegan soft serve and chocolate-dipped frozen bananas. Paleta flavors run from indulgent (cashew tahini espresso, blueberry pancake) to tropical (roasted pineapple, watermelon tajin) to unprecedented (Monster Energy paletas, anyone?). Get them dipped in chocolate, drizzled with chamoy, or sprinkled with toppings like shredded coconut or sprinkles. Ice Queen’s soft serve is thicker, creamier, and less aerated than most; it comes in cones, as sundaes, sandwiched between oatmeal cookies, or blended with mix-ins as a “ThiccFlurry”—which we’re partial to with a heap of De la Rosa mazapan.
Kate’s Ice Cream is gluten-free, dairy-free, and flavor-packed.
Kate’s Ice Cream
Boise, Northwest District, richmond
This trio of devoted vegan and gluten-free parlors serves coconut-based favorites that hold their own among the city’s best. If you’re looking for bona fides, the salted peanut brittle was even recognized by the North American Ice Cream Association. Try the supremely pastel-colored pistachio or ultra floral rosewater cardamom almond, available in house-made oat flour waffle cones or sandwiched between house-baked cookies. Then keep an eye on Kate’s social media presence for whenever the Choco Taco special makes an appearance on the menu—they’re usually only around for a day.
Kulfi
boise
Imagine ice cream, but with a dense, extra-chewy texture and supercharged milky flavor, and you’ve got kulfi, a traditional Indian frozen dessert. Some bars lean on classic Indian flavor profiles, like pistachio-saffron, malai (caramelized milk), and mango lassi, while others are classic Northwest, like the marionberry cheesecake. But Kulfi is no slouch when it comes to its European-style ice cream, either—find some nontraditional flavors like mango, ube, and vegan coconut cardamom cashew. Cookie Monster is a shockingly blue homage to the Sesame Street resident colored with spirulina and packed with Oreos, Hungry Heart chocolate chip cookies, and Parle-G biscuits.
A tall stack at Lovely’s Fifty Fifty.
Lovely’s Fifty Fifty
Boise
They say you’re never too full for ice cream, and that’s especially true after housing one of Sarah Minnick’s nationally celebrated pizzas. But pizza isn’t a prerequisite. In fact, sweet and savory are treated with equal reverence here—it’s right in the restaurant’s name. Stop by for a scoop or grab a to-go pint from the case at the restaurant’s front counter. Look out for the classic chocolate malted milk ball with tiny-crunchy-chocolaty flakes and the can’t-miss salted caramel, plus a rotating cast of farmers-market-fresh flavors like basil vanilla and strawberry buttermilk.
Ome Calli Frozen Treats
beaverton
Get your tropical fruit fix in the form of Mexican ice cream and paletas at this Beaverton shop. Sweet potato–like mamey, creamy guava, tangy soursop, and sour-spicy chamoy (made from chile salted plum) are some of the highlights among the fruity scoops. If you’re after something richer, try the Horchata and spicy Mexican chocolate flavors, or decadent sunflower seed tequila. Paletas come in a rainbow of flavors, with an entire selection devoted to spicy pops, like chile pineapple and chile tamarind, plus a wide range of exotic fruits represented (think tangy yellow nance and cola-like black sapote).
Pinolo offers some of the best gelato in the country.
Pinolo Gelato
Richmond
“Gelato: The Not-Ice Cream of Italy” reads Pinolo’s window. Ingredient-focused flavors like pistachio and stracciatella help explain: gelato is served slightly warmer than ice cream and uses milk instead of cream, which means it’s denser and velvetier, yet somehow lighter and more intensely flavored. Pinolo’s is top-tier, not just for Portland but for the United States, and dare we say, Italy. While gelataio Sandro Paolini generally sticks to classic flavors—check out the plain milk flavor, fior di latte, and the extensive run of dairy-free options—he also innovates, as in the summer foresta flavor, which pairs Douglas fir tips with juniper berries.
Pronto Gelato comes from a powerhouse duo of Italian spots.
Pronto Gelato
cully
This collaborative walk-up window spot brings Downtown legend Spella Caffè together with the Woodlawn pasta heroes at Campana. If you’ve had one of Spella’s famous shakeratos, you know the espresso gelato is obligatory; and there’s of course a full espresso bar for your affogato dreams. We’re all for basking in a single flavor, but Pronto’s option to collage two or three is hard to resist. Oregon hazelnut, California pistachio, and grapefruit Campari flavors are particularly inspiring, so intense and concentrated that they hold their own even when blended at your whim.
A sampling of Salt & Straw’s lengthy menu.
Salt & Straw
Various locations
Yes, Salt & Straw made it big. It’s everywhere, even Disneyland! But it became a national sensation for a reason—it’s really great. Standbys like summery honey lavender and silky freckled mint chocolate chip have been there for many a Portlander over the past decade, and seasonal collaborations, even if they sometimes wander past the threshold of deliciousness (caramelized turkey and cranberry sauce?), always make a provocative splash. If you’re new in town, Arbequina olive oil scoops and pear and blue cheese are legends. Hint: Waffle bowls aren’t explicitly advertised, but they’re the ultimate vessel for chocolate gooey brownie.
Nothing beats the summertime heat like a jaunt to Sugarpine and the river.
Sugarpine Drive-In
Troutdale
Despite its old-school name, the soft-serve sundaes at this riverside drive-through spot would fit any dessert menu in town. The Larch Mountain is a must-try for all Sugarpine newcomers: chocolate-vanilla swirl topped with brown butter blondies, blueberry-lavender sauce, and pine nut honeycomb crunch. While the ice cream flavors are limited to two dairy and two plant-based options (or as a swirl of both), the toppings are why you come, which range from miso caramel and matcha magic shell to nostalgic classics like birthday cake crumbles and honey hot fudge.
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