Best Ice Cream in San Francisco: Institutions and Newcomers

Ice cream in San Francisco is a year-round business, partly because the city never really gets hot and partly because a scoop is the easiest bribe available to a parent halfway up a hill. The city has three genuine institutions and a handful of newer shops doing more interesting things with flavour.

What is the best ice cream in San Francisco?

Bi-Rite Creamery at 3692 18th Street in the Mission, for most people. Its salted caramel is the flavour that made salted caramel a national fixture, the brown sugar with ginger caramel swirl is the one regulars order, and it is a two-minute walk from Dolores Park, which is the point. The line on a warm weekend afternoon is long and it moves slowly. Go on a weekday, or go at 10pm, when the shop is still open and almost empty.

Which shops are the historic ones?

Two, and both are worth the trip. Mitchell’s at 688 San Jose Avenue has been family-run since 1953 and specialises in tropical flavours you will not find elsewhere in the city — ube, macapuno, mango, avocado — reflecting the Filipino community that has always been part of its neighbourhood. Swensen’s at 1999 Hyde Street in Russian Hill has been on the same corner since 1948 and is the original shop of what briefly became a global chain. It is small, old-fashioned, and a natural stop on a cable car walk.

How do the main ice cream shops compare?

Which is the best ice cream for kids?

Mitchell’s, on balance. The queue is short, you take a paper number rather than standing in a line, the flavours are bright and unusual enough to be interesting, and nobody minds a mess. Smitten is the other good answer for a different reason: each scoop is churned to order in a machine that hisses and steams with liquid nitrogen, which is a two-minute science demonstration with a reward at the end.

Bi-Rite is the best ice cream but the worst queue, and a thirty-minute wait with a tired four-year-old is a bad trade. If you are heading for Dolores Park anyway, send one adult to queue while the other takes the children to the playground at the top of the park.

What about Salt & Straw and Humphry Slocombe?

Humphry Slocombe is San Francisco’s own, and its Secret Breakfast — bourbon and cornflakes — is the most famous strange flavour in the city. Its original Mission shop on Harrison Street closed in October 2024, so go to the Ferry Building or the Dogpatch shop at 699 22nd Street instead.

Salt & Straw, on Fillmore Street and in Hayes Valley, is very good and is not from here — it is a Portland import. If you specifically want a San Francisco institution, it is not that. If you want an inventive seasonal menu and a shop that is easy to find, it is a perfectly good choice.

When is ice cream weather in San Francisco?

September and October, genuinely. The city’s warmest, clearest weeks come after the summer fog season ends, which catches out visitors who plan a July beach day and find themselves in a jumper. If you are eating ice cream in July, do it in the Mission or Bernal Heights, which sit in the sunniest pocket of the city, rather than in the Sunset or the Richmond, where the fog sits all afternoon.

Prices and hours were checked in September 2026 and can change, so confirm before you go. We take no payment for inclusion.