Tuesday, June 7, 2011

San Francisco Visit - Ice Cream Treats

Two places on my "Can we please go?" list for visiting my friend K in San Francisco turned out to be ice cream places.  But not just any old chain ice creams, obviously- these are two incredibly popular spots in San Francisco, and I couldn't wait to try them!

First up, we tried Bi-Rite Creamery.  When we first arrived, there was a walk-up window with some flavors listed, and I was v. confused, since I had seen this place on tv before and thought it was a real store.  Then I realized that this was their soft serve window only, and the real store was directly next door, haha. 




I really like how they have the flavors written directly on the glass case - I bet it's much easier for them to do this than to have to change a hanging wall sign every day, since their flavor selection seems to change v. frequently.  Plus, it adds a little more of that "homemade" appeal to me. 



There were SO many different flavors I was trying to decide between - I was initially going to go for one of their signature sundaes, but we clearly were eating more the rest of that day, so I went with a single cup, haha.  I finally decided on the earl grey ice cream because I love tea-flavored sweets.  This was really creamy and delicious!  Like a sweet milk tea flavor with an assertive but not overwhelming taste.  I also like their little wooden "spoons", reminds me of the ones you get from the ice cream truck if you ordered something in a cup, haha. 

On another day, I forget what we were talking about initally but I suddenly remembered that I was going to try to find It's-It ice cream sandwiches while I was in San Francisco, since they are pretty much only available in the city or close to it, apparently.  After a little confusion over the name - aka K thought I was going crazy, telling her that I wanted "Itsits" and she had no idea what I was talking about- we looked it up and found that they are sold in most local supermarkets. 

Unfortunately the store we went to was sold out of the original (I'm assuming vanilla ice cream) ones, so we got a box of the Cappuccino flavor. 




First off- these are pretty enormous, haha.  As you can see there is plenty of ice cream sandwiched between the oatmeal cookies!  Despite the fact that I don't like oatmeal cookies I enjoyed this a lot!  Although I think it helped that these oatmeal cookies didn't have raisins in them, which is usually the case with oatmeal-based cookies.  I'm so glad I got to try these!




Our final stop in the ice cream adventure was Humphy Slocombe, which I was also excited to try out. 




I didn't get the Jesus Juice, but I thought it was pretty funny, heh.  They also had a Breakfast ice cream (you can see part of it on the top right of the phone) which included bourbon and corn flakes, haha.




I went with the Vietnamese iced coffee ice cream, which admittedly is not one of the crazier flavors in the context of all of their ice creams, but I still thought it'd be interesting.  It had a v. strong coffee flavor with a hit of sweetness as well.  It's definitely different from regular coffee ice cream!  I would've enjoyed a little bit of texture (maybe some chocolate covered espresso beans) but overall I found it to be an enjoyable cup of ice cream.  

Just as a side note- we did not eat all of these one right after another, it was over the course of a few days.  And we walked a TON in between...really!!  


Bi-Rite Creamery
3692 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

Humphry Slocombe
2790 Harrison St
San Francisco, CA 94110

3 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure I've tried It's-It in Hawaii...I remember the oatmeal cookie

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  2. I would of visited the exact same places!

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  3. @KandS: Awesome!

    @Maris: Haha, yay!

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