It’s hot outside! As we’re all trying to survive this record-breaking heat wave, here’s a special summer edition of Consuming LA featuring a ranked list of the twelve best places to get amazing frozen soft serve treats in Los Angeles. Please stay cool and consume responsibly!
12. Bumsan Organic Milk Bar (Koreatown). This little pink shop on Western Avenue serves super premium soft serve from the leading organic dairy producer in Korea. Pro tip: get the Croffle SoulMate, which combines your choice of soft serve (I love the Taro Milk Tea flavor) with a crispy, caramelized croissant-waffle hybrid.
11. Honeymee (Downtown, Little Tokyo, Gardena, Koreatown). This small chain serves creamy goodness served with a yummy chunk of honeycomb. It’s the bee’s knees!
10. Magpies Softserve (Tarzana, Silver Lake, Highland Park). As a soft serve specialist, Magpies makes some of the best ice cream in town. Their rotating flavors include Thai Tea, Roasted Strawberry, Mexican Hot Chocolate, and my favorite, Corn Almond.
9. Pressed Juicery (multiple locations). This soft serve is vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free, and made with healthier ingredients like fruit and vegetable juices, almonds and coconuts. It’s also incredibly delicious. I recommend the vanilla or chocolate flavor draped with almond butter.
8. The Bigg Chill Frozen Yogurt (Westwood). This is one of the very best yogurt shops in town, with lots of great flavors and even more great toppings, including several different kinds of cookie dough.
7. Indigo Cow (West LA/Sawtelle, Echo Park). This newer addition to the LA ice cream scene serves high-end Hokkaido-style soft serve. Get the Yaki Imo Brulee, which is topped with brûléed sweet potato puree (or pumpkin puree in October!), or the M.B.R., which is topped with mochi, brown sugar syrup and roasted soybean powder.
6. Humphrey Yogart (Sherman Oaks). Located inside Gelson’s Market in Sherman Oaks is another one of the best frozen yogurt shops in LA. They offer something for everyone (including low carb options), but their speciality is custom-blended frozen concoctions exactly per your specifications.
5. Lupaba (Koreatown). This not a frozen dessert shop, but rather an awesome new Italian/Korean pasta bar. If you’re lucky when you eat there, they will have a dessert offering of “BTS,” which is Black Truffle Soft Serve with Brown Butter, and if you love truffle like I do, it will blow you away.
4. Milk Bar (Mid-City). If you’ve never had this dessert shop’s Cereal Milk Ice Cream, you are missing out big time! The soft serve itself tastes like the milk remaining in the cereal bowl once you’ve eaten the cornflakes.
3. Go Greek Yogurt (Studio City, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Mid-City/Larchmont, Brentwood). There’s no hotter food trend right now than protein-rich, high quality, frozen Greek yogurt. The yogurt at Go Greek is pricey and the lines can be long, but it is phenomenal and highly addictive.
2. Hokey Pokey LA (Century City). Three brothers from New Zealand brought their homeland’s famous toffee-infused soft serve ice cream to Century City Mall, and we are the incredibly lucky beneficiaries.
1. Yoga-urt (Santa Monica, Echo Park, Glendale, Granada Hills). It’s vegan and a healthier option, but that aside, it’s the best tasting soft serve in the city. The Chocolate Bliss, Strawberry Serenity and Pistachio Passion flavors are all incredible, but the Peanut Butter Prana is truly to die for.
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