San Francisco Ice Cream Tour
An urban hike to SF’s iconic ice cream spots
As a self-proclaimed ice cream fiend, I had an idea one day to curate a walking tour around the city of San Francisco to hit up as many ice cream shops as possible, an urban hike interspersed with desserts, if you will. I’ll be honest — calling this a “hike” has really helped me justify eating such a large quantity of ice cream in one day. Here is what I came up with.
Japantown
Matcha Cafe Maiko: Tucked inside the Japan Center Mall, this stop offers a variety of vanilla and matcha soft serves that instantly transport you to the street-side ice cream vendors in Japan. We got a boba sundae and the pearls that accompanied the ice cream were perfectly soft and chewy.
Miyako Old Fashion Ice Cream: A true hidden gem, this small and unassuming shop offers a whopping 100 flavors. The owner Tom and his daughter Teresa are the absolute sweetest people, and at $4 for two giant scoops, this has to be one of the best deals in the city.
Lower Haight
Powder: This shop advertises themselves as “ice cream meets shaved ice” and that description is spot on. Their shaved snow is light, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth and so refreshing to eat. They have lots of Asian-inspired flavors to choose from like lychee, Vietnamese coffee, and ube.
The Mission
Honestly, you could make an ice cream tour of the places in the Mission alone. There are simply so many spots here, we chose to prioritize several that we had never been to before.
Nieves Cinco De Mayo: This is an authentic Mexican sweets store that has an array of homemade ice creams and sorbets. The owner Luis grew up in a small town near Guadalajara, where at 8 years old his uncle taught him how to make ice cream by hand. We picked leche quemada (burnt milk) and elote (corn) and both were delicious and full of flavor. They are well-known for their mangonadas, which I am dying to come back and try.
Humphry Slocombe: I’d heard that this place had some pretty unique flavors like Secret Breakfast and Drunken Stonefruit, but they were mysteriously closed when we stopped by on a Sunday afternoon. Serendipitously, a group of strangers right outside the store gave us a pint of Cornflake Crunch — apparently Humphry Slocombe is giving away free pints with proof of COVID vaccination (as of Sept 2021)!
More Mission District spots
Below are several more places in the Mission worth considering if you’re crafting an ice cream tour of your own.
Bi-Rite Creamery: Bi-Rite is a San Francisco classic, a staple in the city for over 80 years and serving up ice cream since 2006. Two of their signature flavors are salted caramel (pictured above) and balsamic strawberry.
Garden Creamery: They used to serve their ice cream in these warm cinnamon sugar pastry chimney cones. A lot of their flavors have a tropical, Hawaiian flair like lilikoi, pandan, and taro.
Hayes Valley
Souvla: This is a casual Greek restaurant that also serves frozen Greek yogurt. We tried the one with olive oil and flaky sea salt and it was delightful — a perfect blend of creamy tart yogurt, fruity olive oil, and crunchy flecks of salt.
More Hayes Valley spots
Salt and Straw: Lots of eclectic seasonal flavors like Pear & Blue Cheese and Maple & Bacon Streusel.
Smitten: Their ice cream is churned with liquid nitrogen, which gives it a smooth, ice-free texture.
Potrero Hill & Dogpatch
We were a bit ice creamed out at this point and decided to cut our hike short, but here are the two other places we bookmarked and hope to come back and visit soon:
Sunday Social: (Formerly Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous) I’m mainly interested in trying their White Rabbit flavor, based on a Chinese milk candy that was one of my childhood favorites.
Milkbomb: Another place that I stumbled across on Yelp on day, one of their signatures is a donut ice cream sandwich!
Here is a map of the spots mentioned in this writeup, as well as a sample walking route. The path we took ended up being 6.8 miles, though you could certainly make that longer or shorter depending on your walking and ice-cream-consuming stamina.
