"I have never been disappointed by their rich, decadent ice cream that somehow also manages to be refreshing."
By James Douthit
When I moved to Boston in June 2023, my first order of business was to purchase a bike. My second was to start riding it to ice cream shops.
I’ve always loved ice cream. Growing up my family would spend part of the summer in Ocean City, New Jersey, where we’d visit the venerated A La Mode Ice Cream Parlor. During these beach trips, my late grandmother Irma would take the kids to ice cream so the adults could get a breather, but she also wanted to sample A La Mode’s sundaes as many times as she could. A love of ice cream runs in my family, and my grandmother had ice cream most nights even when we weren’t on vacation. As we grew older, we would meet with her to chat at a Friendly’s over a sundae.
Ice cream, for me, is as deep a rabbit hole as wine or coffee might be for others. It can involve optimized temperature equations, intentional ingredient sourcing, and aged, fermented flavors from vanilla bean. Ice cream making sometimes even contains more room for creativity and innovation than the latter categories because ice cream base is usually made better by mix-ins or swirls, while for coffee products most additions aside from steamed milk only dampen the taste of a great cup of coffee.
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One ice cream originator in particular changed the way I see ice cream. Right Cream in my hometown Denver, Colorado, makes a flavor called Cookies and C.R.E.A.M., which has an astronomically high fat content and crushed Oreos that don’t go soft because of a delicate toffee coating. The number of new ideas and different flavor/texture combinations that Right Cream exhibited completely reframed how I’d been thinking about ice cream. I learned from their product that tasting a scratch-made ice cream could be a glimpse into a skilled maker’s mind, not unlike reading a poem.
Out of respect and admiration for the art and science of ice cream making, I decided I wanted to try the ice cream from every originator that I could reasonably bike to.
How I made my list of places to visit
I started my journey by making a list of all 150 ice cream shops near Boston that weren’t national chains, but the majority of those shops were serving someone else’s wholesale ice cream. The most common ice cream served was Richardson’s, followed by Puritan, and Gifford’s.
To discern if a given ice cream shop made their own, I checked their website. If it read “homemade” or clearly stated “made in shop,” I’d trust them and keep them on my map to visit. If it wasn’t clearly stated, I’d find their flavor list for clear signs they were not ice cream originators. For example, there are a few distinctive flavors in the Richardson’s lineup such as Phantomberry and Snickas that could clue me in that the distributor was used.
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If every flavor name exactly matched a known distributor, I could eliminate the shop. If I couldn’t tell for sure from flavors, perhaps when a shop had just one or two unique names, I called and emailed them — if I got no response, I lathered up with sunscreen and biked over there to ask them myself.
Richardson’s Farm in Middleton — over 20 miles from home — was the first place I biked to. I was excited to try the flavors I’d been seeing so often on menus, the Phantomberry and Death by Chocolate, along with two more standard flavors, cookie dough and mint Oreo fudge. Phantomberry, a cookie swirl accompanied by well-composed brownie chunks in a raspberry base, specifically impressed me. I felt like I’d tasted the best flavors at Richardson’s, but how could I ensure I gave other ice cream shops a fair shake with just four flavors? On the sunny, hot summer ride back home, I formulated a plan to sample flavors more consistently:
- A plain vanilla: to let the milk and cream shine.
- A fruit-heavy flavor: to understand how the shop dealt with extra water content.
- A peanut butter flavor: because it’s my favorite.
- A flavor full of mix-ins: to grasp how they prepped other desserts like cake or cookie dough for the ice cream.
Unfortunately for me, I liked that roster of flavors so much that when I got any new recommendations for a given shop, I ended up having to get a fifth and even sixth scoop. Who knew that biking to ice cream shops was an expensive hobby?
To understand an ice cream maker, I first get an impression of the texture: stretching it with a spoon to test how much stabilizing gum was used, then letting some of the vanilla melt on my palate and pressing it gently against the roof of my mouth to understand the milkfat content and cream-to-milk ratio.
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During this initial step, I can also get an idea of the overrun, or how much air was incorporated into the ice cream. I personally enjoy fluffy ice cream with a good amount of air, but ice cream on the denser side is often considered more refined by critics — it helps their case that air is free, but cream is not. After overrun, I forcefully crush some of the ice cream against the roof of my mouth to get an idea of the ice crystal size.
Once I taste all the flavors I’ve ordered, I will sometimes ask the employees about the ice cream to confirm some of my suspicions about stabilizers, egg content, and fat content.
After verifying my list, biking to over 50 ice cream originators, and tasting over 250 flavors, here’s a countdown of the 5 best places to get ice cream around Greater Boston, and what to order.
5. Holy Cow Ice Cream Cafe (multiple locations)
🏆 Best flavor: Ritzy AF
Holy Cow is an outlier on this list in that I biked there specifically to try their national award-winning flavor “Ritzy AF.” The concoction lived up to the accolades — it’s chock-full of delightfully bougie, browned butter-forward chunks of their “Ritz cracker toffee bark” in a salted butter ice cream that takes on some of the toffee pieces’ nuttiness. I also ordered Corner Piece, Eazy Peazy, “Loaded Pumpkin Spice Latte” (a fall release), strawberry, and vegan cookie butter.
“Ritzy AF” was their best flavor followed by strawberry, which was decadent and full but tasted utterly fresh, which was impressive given that strawberries don’t usually give up juice without tasting a bit crushed and sad. One note is that my partner, Abby, took the train with me to the Salem location specifically so that she could try “Ritzy AF” in a large size, but her scoop was very disappointing – she didn’t get any substantial pieces of the namesake Ritz toffee bark, which was the reason I loved the flavor so much when I tried it in Peabody. We didn’t have time to order it again during our visit to Salem.
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Holy Cow Ice Cream Cafe; locations in Peabody, Gloucester, Salem, and Dennis Port
4. Gerly’s (formerly Tipping Cow) (Somerville)
🏆 Best flavor: Cookies and cream
Gerly’s recently rebranded from its former name due to the departure of a co-owner, but the ice cream located near Gilman Square is better than ever. The shop now solely run by owner Gerly Adrien has a scratch-made feel, with flavors crossed off the menu or a freshly completed tub carried over and added during the course of a single visit. That’s the charm of their genuine homemade ice cream — it’s made in-store, one room over, so there’s no mistaking that they’re a real deal originator.
Their flavors, similarly, are the real deal. On my first visit, I was impressed by their cookies and cream, which had crunchy Oreos still intact throughout. Only ice cream made day-of can really contain cookies that are not yet soggy. Abby likes to say they’re “not scared of the flavor.”
One that particularly excited me was peach cobbler, a rotating menu item that will return later in August. It’s an ode to nutmeg, with a nice spice, and peaches plus mixed-in Graham cracker crust and ladyfinger pieces. Their rum caramel cookie is also a well-composed dessert dish all on its own. The flavors of oak and toasted coconut rum balance perfectly with the sweetness of the Oreo filling and earthiness of the cookie.
Once or twice, I have tasted flavors like the fig goat cheese that had a touch of ice to them, but it’s part of the no-stabilizers charm at Gerly’s. The shop also has a more typical ratio of milk to cream, so for those who dislike the palate-coating effect described at Honeycomb, Gerly’s will be the bee’s knees.
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Gerly’s Ice Cream; 415 Medford St., Somerville
3. Clear Flour Bread (Brookline)
🏆 Best flavor: Banana pudding
Clear Flour only makes pints because they’re primarily a bakery, but their ice cream shines like their croissants, showing off a mastery of flavor that every ice cream lover deserves to experience.
They don’t advertise any specific ingredient sources, but you’d never suspect an ordinary origin if you tasted Clear Flour’s pints. The chocolate pint is one I couldn’t stay away from even after it was melted and re-frozen from a long ride home.
The texture of the churn stayed at a satiny-smooth mouthfeel, which underscored the deep and almost velvety chocolate taste. Each spoonful was akin to letting fine tasting chocolate melt on my tongue.
In the vanilla flavor, the vanilla bean flecks were impossible to miss, and egg from the custard base shined through to make this ice cream decadent and refined.
Piña colada and banana fudge pudding displayed a mastery of water content variation, with little to no perceptible iciness. Their vanilla and chocolate are both my favorite of the category, and although every other flavor at Clear Flour is a need-to-try, the banana pudding was the cream of the crop. Its salty, creamy banana base perfectly balanced the darker chocolate notes of the fudge swirled throughout.
Clear Flour Bread; 178 Thorndike St., Brookline
2. Cal’s Creamery (Reading)
🏆 Best flavor: Cannoli
I don’t particularly love cannolis, but the cannoli ice cream at Cal’s blew me away. It’s one of the most creative ice cream flavors I’ve tried. Even though the idea is simple (putting a cannoli in the ice cream) their execution exuded joy and craft.
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The flavor features a vanilla ice cream base mixed with a special cannoli filling that’s a pleasant surprise each time it appears, along with mini chocolate chips throughout.
My favorite component, though, was the sharded cannoli shell that was somehow flavorful even against its backdrop, with a texture perfectly between chewy and crunchy.
I also tried banana, peanut butter cup, and Crazy Cow on my first visit. They were all amazing — banana tasted of the perfect ripeness in a way I haven’t found before, the Reese’s cups jived so well with the sweet cream it was hard to believe they weren’t made for each other, and Crazy Cow’s Oreo base was deep and almost earthy. Their ice cream is a fusion of modern and classic styles, a softness and smoothness lent by modern machines (and some stabilizing gums) with an old-school cool.
Cal’s Creamery; 122 Main St., Reading
1. Honeycomb Creamery (Cambridge)
🏆 Best flavor: Sweet corn
Cambridge has an exceptional concentration of ice cream originators, and I enjoyed all of them. But my first flavor at Honeycomb made it clear they’d be a cut above.
The milkfat content of the ginger rhubarb crisp flavor coated the roof of my mouth and my tongue, not so thoroughly that I actually had to scrape it off, but enough to convey a delightful indulgence. Their sweet corn soft serve was the best corn-flavored ice cream I’ve ever had — and I’ve lived in Iowa. It stands among their endless highlights like orange olive oil brownie, port cherry vanilla, and matcha lemon that rotate monthly along with stable classics like birthday cake and cold brew coffee chip.
Honeycomb manages to ace every flavor — I have never been disappointed by their rich, decadent ice cream that somehow also manages to be refreshing. They use in-season produce to make their flavors, which imbues the ice cream with something of an elusive quality given that, for example, once the sweet corn flavor is done this season, it won’t be back until the following year.
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Although the same is true of other shops in my top five, Honeycomb also has special days like Taco Tuesday, where they make a special ice cream taco available only twice, adding to the singular-feeling experience: I am standing here reveling in the best ice cream in our city, and I may never get to taste something I love so much again. Of course, you can always send in feedback asking them to make that particular taco, or flavor, again.
Honeycomb Creamery; 1702 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge
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