Scoops' out For Summer

Eating at 31 Portland ice cream stores in 31 days

Five years ago, Portland had no local ice cream to speak of.

Seems crazy, I know, but we even published an article about it. "The Big Chill" bemoaned Portland's lack of house-made* ice cream and concluded by telling Portlanders to drive to... Vancouver.

"Given this city's use of local products...it is surprising that a small, hand-produced ice cream hasn't happened in Portland yet," said chef Chris Israel (Gruner, Corazon) at the time.

Well, it happened. Only weeks later, Cool Moon in the Pearl opened its doors to hoards of damp, squealing kiddies, serving them far better ice cream than they can appreciate or deserve. Something of a renaissance followed, and it wasn't just new scoop shops and trucks: restaurants, chocolate shops and bakeries all began literally churning out their own in-house products.

Now, you can't spit in this city without hitting a pint of ultra fatty organic ice cream, flavoured with locally slaughtered strawberries and bearing a too-precious letterpressed label.

You'll hear no complaints from us, though one wonders at how a city that's cold nine months out of the year—and merely warm for the greater part of the other three—can sustain such a rapidly expanding ice cream ecosystem.

And yet, the bubble continues to grow. We expect at least three new Portland scoop shops to have opened by the end of summer—another Salt & Straw, a downtown Ruby Jewel and newcomer What's the Scoop?—and, we'll conservativly estimate, approximately 57 new froyo joints. 

Because we called this forth, and to honor the very small window in which eating this stuff is seasonally justifiable, we have decided to spend July tasting our way through some of the finest frozen confections this city has to offer.

I could lie and say our time-peg is National Ice Cream Month, but I didn't know that when I started working on this project, and refuse to endorse PR-created pseudo holidays.

Really, it's just an excuse for WW writers to eat dessert on the company dime. It won't be ice cream alone, we'll also be licking up gelato, shave ice, frozen yogurt, and anything else that is sweet and near-freezing. We will eat at a different store all 31 days of the month, and report back here.

For the most part, we're trying to focus on places that make their own products (read: the ones that don't serve Umpqua), though we will probably make a few exceptions for parlors that offer something else rare or unique. If your favorite ice cream joint meets this criteria, leave us a suggestion in the comments and we might swing by.

* Well, we called it "homemade," but as our current copy editors will tell you—with a special withering look they teach people in copy editing school—commercial cooks do not sell food prepared in their home kitchen; that's illegal.








Day 9: j. Gelati



Day 12: Ruby Jewel

Day 13: YoCream




Day 17: 50 Licks

Day 18: Salt & Straw


Day 20: Scoop


Day 22: Via Delizia


Day 24: Two Tarts




Day 28: Oui Presse


WWeek 2015

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