Owner Ed Washington has been scooping ice cream here for more than 40 years, since he opened the shop in 1984—and his children have been helping him out for nearly as long. The shop remains the nostalgic ideal of a neighborhood ice cream parlor, with sundaes, floats, shakes, malts, and waffle cones that perfume the surrounding street. The freezer case stretches the length of the room and features flavors traditional, modern, and absurd-to-anyone-older-than-12 (birthday cake, Froot Loops, bubble gum). They come from a variety of vendors, including super-rich Olympic Mountain Ice Cream (Washington happily points out which ones).

New Zealand is taking the world by storm, or at least its ice cream is. This counter inside Highland Park Corner Store comes from onetime New Zealand resident Meaghan Haas and shows off how Northwest fruit works well in the swirled-to-order frozen treat. Keep an eye out for seasonal specials, like Italian plum, plucked from neighborhood trees, and unique local toppings, like a spice mix made by Papa Tony’s Hot Sauce.

Though it debuted in 2016, this ice cream parlor on the First Avenue side of Pike Place Market (with a mini satellite in West Seattle) feels every inch a timeless institution, from the egg creams and cherry phosphates to the swinging row of stools before a marble-topped soda fountain that dates to the 1930s. Lopez Island Creamery supplies the 15-ish flavors—lovely on their own, but even better in one of Shug’s elaborate sundaes.

Four generations of the Miller family have churned ice cream at this West Seattle institution, named not for their devout UW allegiance, but for little peanut-rolled ice cream concoctions ice cream patriarch Herman Miller would make back in the 1930s. Today, an impressive 40-odd flavors emerge from a pair of Emery Thompson ice cream machines in the back, scooped by upbeat local high school students into freshly made waffle cones. Flavors range from classics (coffee, rocky road, butter toasted pecan) to Americana-tinged creativity (root beer, licorice, strawberry cheesecake). Every one is a testament to the simple, astonishing powers of really good ingredients, like name-brand Nutella or berries straight from a Mount Vernon farm. 

Christina Wood displays her perfectionism in dough form at Temple Pastries, and now she shows it in soft serve form, too, around the corner at the seasonal Ice Cream Window. A silky smooth and phenomenally rich cantaloupe sorbet exemplifies her work and tastes like what one imagines those $200 Japanese melons do. Even the sprinkles get an upgrade, to ice cream cone shapes in pastel colors. With its current evenings-only hours, the window shed the "and Sandwich" part of its original identity—the only sandwiches here now are made of ice cream.

Seattle’s mind-blowing plant-based ice cream shops are the work of Juicebox veteran Kari Brunson and Hot Cakes founder Autumn Martin. So is the lineup of scoops: crazy decadent, deeply flavored, and in no way a dietary consolation prize. Three plant-filled shops serve coolly modern flavors, like dirty horchata, or chocolate date, packing all the richness of a roadside Southern California date milkshake. Sorbets like beet-strawberry-rose achieve similar levels of excellence, sans nut milks. Ice cream comes in a cup or miraculous gluten-free vanilla-maple waffle cone, ready to be topped with things like chocolate sauce or moon goo (a caramel sauce). It bears repeating: Everything in here is vegan and gluten free. 

The collection of kids’ coloring pages featuring the small shop’s canine mascot posted on the pink walls telegraphs the two most important types of customers here. The menu caters more to the human children than the dogs (though they are welcome), with the sprawling menu of a classic neighborhood shop, offering some 20 flavors of housemade ice cream in every permutation of sundae, sauce, and scoop. Owner Richard Ridout simultaneously serves cones and creates community, chatting with just about every customer who enters the shop—about the origins of the Kauai Pie flavor, the basset hound for which the shop is named, or the local chocolate they use, sourced from Spinnaker.

Though technically not ice cream nor frozen yogurt, Hellenika brings the best of both of those into a pleasantly tangy and wonderfully grown-up scoop. Founded by a trio of Australian siblings (including Ellenos Greek Yogurt cofounder Alex Apostolopoulos), Hellenika shows its commitment to its Pike Place Market home by making everything on-site and infusing products from neighboring vendors into its flavors, which include Seattle Fog, honey lavender, and marionberry.

Don’t be fooled by the hype: Yes, they make some of the city’s best pies, but they also churn out incredible ice cream. Made at the Burien location, the ice cream is an absolute beast. Thick, chewy, and full of flavor—chocolate chip, strawberry, vanilla, or the correct choice, pistachio—it can hold its own against the pizza in a way that something lighter could never manage. Northenders can get it, too, from full-service sibling Lupo in Fremont.

A stylish (and busy) destination for flair-enhanced soft serve combos and freshly made taiyaki. Those Japanese cakes shaped like open-mouth fish double as cones for gravity-defying swirls of black sesame, strawberry Dole Whip, or ube and vanilla swirl (though you can also request your taiyaki on the side so you can enjoy it warm, without fear of your soft serve toppling while you eat it). Matcha Man began as a popup, but now might be the only soft serve shop in town with a Dozfy mural and a DJ booth; the staff guides visitors through the four-step process of choosing your preferred cone, topping, drizzle, and swirl combo. 

There’s a reason the spoons that come with the soft serve are shaped like tiny shovels. This pair of counter-service spots offer elaborately bedecked lineup of bingsoo, honey toast, and Thai tea concoctions. The soft serve portion of the menu may look restrained compared with, say, a shaved ice confection served in a hollowed-out melon. But a hefty swirl and toppings like mango and sticky rice or a slice of corn on the cob pack flavor, texture, and a play of hot and cold. 

A destination for Indian street also offers a rotating soft serve program that translates those vivid flavors into frozen form. All three locations offer flavors like pistachio and cardamom, mango lassi, paan, and watermelon and fennel. Soft serve comes by the cup. 

Molly Moon’s alums Emily Kim and Heather Hodge devise some truly delightful revenue streams to help fund their pastry training program. Including a soft serve window, dispensing cones from the dutch door at their kitchen in Pioneer Square, where housemade toppings like coconut cake crumbs or a salty peanut brittle crumble filter nostalgia through some very talented baking minds. By all means, gild that chocolate or vanilla lily with some hard shell topping—chocolate, butterscotch, and a memorable strawberry-passionfruit combo—or some malty hot fudge or sticky toffee sauce. 

Keep it simple, stupid-cheap. That’s the saying, right? Sure seems to be how this SoDo burger drive-through heard it. There’s chocolate, there’s vanilla, and there’s a swirl; it comes in a cone and costs less than parking in front of a Molly Moon’s. The ice cream is thick, not too sweet, and the chocolate tastes precisely like childhood.

Each ice cream from this takeout-window sibling of Tamari Bar begins with a base of the creamiest, softest vanilla ice cream, swirled into a cup primed with flavored syrup, then topped with more of the same. The matcha and hoji-cha come from Sugimoto Tea Co., and a bright, summery yuzu, black sesame, and variety of specials scribbled on pieces of paper posted around the register round out the options. Even better, if you can’t decide, they offer a soft serve flight, with six syrups.

The soft serve window at Homer was so beloved, the owners of the Beacon Hill restaurant made this swirly dessert a centerpiece of their follow-up bar. Here, six flavors await swirls, waffles cones, your choice of hard shell (peanut butter, chocolate, or caramel), and a bevy of toppings, from fancy cherries to crushed-up potato chips. Vanilla and malted chocolate soft serve remain staples, but other specials channel the seasonal Mediterranean vibe over at Homer, like banana cardamom, rosemary and pear, vegan rainier cherry, or fig leaf and coconut. Meanwhile, Homer’s window down the street continues to dispense its own thoughtful flavors.