Jaunted

Food

Fodor's Gets It Wrong: SF Ice Cream

August 4, 2006 at 8:40 AM | 0 Comments

Sometimes guide books get it right, and sometimes they are off. In this feature, we will tell you what the guide pros said about a place and then give you our take.

San Franciscans know that the best ice cream in town is not, as Fodor's Ice Cream Top 10 list would have you believe, Swensen's. The inarguable queen of the local ice cream scene is Mitchell's. Located in an odd corner of San Francisco where the Mission, Noe Valley, and Bernal Heights all sort of drop off into each other, Mitchell's has been around since 1953.

What makes Mitchell's so great is not just the deliriously wonderful 16% butterfat cream content but also the amazing range of flavors on offer. Avocado, langka (jackfruit), buko (young coconut), macapuno (sweet coconut), and ube (purple yam) are some of the more atypical flavors. Mitchell's imports the tropical fruits that serve as the basis of these flavors directly from the Philippines, and makes its ice cream on-site.

People are obsessed with Mitchell's. Nobody complains about having to wait for their ice cream. They pull their numbered tickets out of the dispenser and wait, drooling in anticipation. Some people even schedule flight changes in order to enjoy the stuff.

Mitchell's is such a cut above Swensen's that there's really no comparison between the two. We expect better things from Fodor's.

[Image via est0al/Flickr]

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