Ice Cream

As you can see ice cream is my favorite dessert…

Sweet Rose (Brentwood, Santa Monica, and Mid City) Handcrafted ice cream made with fresh ingredients. They go to the farmers market twice a week. You must get the chocolate waffle cone. They are made fresh daily.  Best flavors: Brown butter with lemon wafer, horchata (sorbet), and mint chip. They offer a large variety of non-dairy options.

Saffron & Rose (Westwood) Middle Eastern ice cream. They offer unique flavors but also carry traditional chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, etc. Best flavors: Saffron pistachio, white rose, and almond. A few non-dairy options.

Three Twins Ice Cream (Santa Monica, San Francisco, Napa) Organic ice cream. They also carry it in health food stores. Best flavors: Lemon cookie, chocolate orange.

Milk (West Hollywood and Silverlake) Homemade ice cream macaron sandwiches. Best Flavors: Thai tea, nutella, lavender.

Salt & Straw (on Larchmont Blvd. and Portland) Originated in Oregon. A novelty ice cream shop known for their unique flavors made with high-quality ingredients. They offer new seasonal flavors each month. One month their flavors were inspired by food trucks and included Thai-chilis and green corn tamales. Another month was vegetable themed offering ice cream with roasted cauliflower, chocolate covered potato chips, and sweet carrots. Best flavors: Almond brittle, toasted coconut candied macadamia nuts (tastes like a samoa cookie and is dairy-free!), toasted white chocolate with strawberry. Here’s a list of the food truck inspired flavors.

Kind Kreme (Pasadena) A raw/vegan organic ice cream shop. They have shakes, smoothies, and coffee too. Best flavors: Wake & shake, almond butter and banana.

Scoops Westside (Palms) Hole-in-the-wall ice cream parlor with unique flavors. Best flavors: Brown bread, almond coffee, dirty chai, pb ginger snaps. Variety of non-dairy flavors.

Long Beach Creamery (Long Beach) Small ice cream shop right off the 405. They are closed every Monday and Tuesday to make their delicious ice cream. Best flavors: Choco nana (chocolate banana sorbet), burnt caramel, and black ring coffee.

Churro Borough (Los Feliz) Very close to the Griffith Observatory. Churro ice cream sandwiches. Wide selection of dairy-free options. Best flavors: Brown Butter Cookie (dairy-free), Spanish Latte, and Chocolate Almond Coconut (dairy-free).

Grom (Malibu) High-quality gelato. I went to a Grom in Paris and Florence. Unique flavors with fresh ingredients. Best flavors: Dark chocolate (dairy-free), Crema Di Grom, and their seasonal sorbets.

Go Greek Yogurt (Beverly Hills) Upscale authentic Greek yogurt. They offer self serve or yogurt bowls (with non-fat, 1%, 0r 10% yogurt). They list the benefits of each bowl (B12, Iodine, Calcium, etc.). They have healthy toppings that include flaxseed, hempseed, rose jelly, and carrot purée.  Best flavors: Honey, Biscuit (seasonal), or the 10% yogurt with rose jelly.

Pies and cookies

• The Pie hole (Pasadena and Downtown) maple custard
• Bottega Louie (Santa Monica) macarons
• B Sweet (on Sawtelle and food truck) chocolate banana bread pudding