This Thai dessert shop by the Ruen Pair folks serves a few different sundae riffs, and none of them disappoint. That’s mostly because each comes with Kanomwaan’s custardy Thai gelato, which is as delicious as it sounds. The most Thai thing about these scoops are the flavors, like mango sticky rice, vanilla-y pandan, coconut milk with butterfly pea, and smoked salted egg that tastes like the smell of blown-out birthday candles. The basic cup is a two-scoop minimum, but we have no complaints.

Awan serves creamy, plant-based ice cream from a tiny takeout window in West Hollywood. You come to this Indonesian-inspired dessert shop for refreshing flavors like blood orange, lemongrass, and rhubarb pie—not a basic scoop of chocolate on a sugar cone. The vanilla beans here are imported straight from Bali and the strawberries come from renowned farm Harry’s Berries in Oxnard. Expect to walk away holding a beige cup full of something wonderful and unexpected.

Mashti Malone’s is an LA institution that’s been serving Persian-style ice cream in the heart of Hollywood (and now Westwood) for almost 40 years. The menu is large, with nearly 50 different flavors served on any given day, but what makes this tiny shop so special are its fragrant flavors that stay on your tongue all afternoon. Think ginger rosewater, saffron, and roasted pistachio-infused heaven.

Thank you, Portland—along with professional baristas and an appreciation for Subarus, you’ve also given us some of the best ice cream in LA. You’d probably assume a place with flavors like avocado sherbet and black olive brittle with goat cheese wouldn’t be for everyone, but you’d be wrong. Because Salt & Straw adds stuff you should never put in ice cream, and somehow still makes it taste delicious.

Between their Oaxacan-style paletas, super-creamy gelatos, and sorbets that taste like freshly juiced strawberries, this incredible Mexican dessert shop reminds us of an enchanted bow and arrow, or Olivia Colman’s IMDb page: it simply doesn’t miss. There are a few locations throughout the city, with each storefront stocked with over 30 different flavors of paletas, including watermelon, mango dusted with chile, and leche quemada.

This sibling-owned scoop shop in North Torrance is ideal for when you’re craving ice cream that’s a little more balanced than a nine-topping sugar bomb. Kansha’s flavors are kept simple to highlight star ingredients: intense dark chocolate with roasted barley tea, nutty black sesame, or milk ice cream with caramel and fresh-baked oatmeal cookies. If you see any seasonal fruit flavors on the menu, prioritize—they often source from growers at the Torrance Farmers’ Market.

Along with the trying samples at the Aesop store, Bacio di Latte is one of the few places at the Century City Mall where you can have a moment of uninterrupted peace. This serene, all-white gelato shop serves a dozen rotating menu flavors, including red velvet, biscotto with big chunks of spice cookies, and passionfruit cream. Their two best-sellers, though, are what we gravitate toward: the excellent, not-too-sweet pistachio and the bacio di latte.

Saffron & Rose is one of the largest brands of Persian ice cream in America and can be found in markets nationwide, but nothing beats a visit to its original location in Westwood. Located just south of Wilshire in Persian Square, the tiny shop has been cranking out thick, Persian-style ice cream for almost four decades and still has lines out the door. Almost everybody is eating the saffron and pistachio flavor, but we never leave without getting at least one scoop of the orange blossom as well.

The family running Pops, a small shop located in Santa Clarita, comes from Belize, and they’ve integrated Latin American flavors into the majority of their ice cream—and the result is out of this world. There’s the insanely sweet zapote, the nut-flavored lucuma, and a coconut ice cream we want to fall asleep next to every night. Skip the cone and cup, and put it all in a hollowed-out, half-coconut husk to make your friends even more jealous they haven’t been here.

Greetings from the grandaddy of all LA ice cream. Established in 1919, Fosselman’s is the definition of a classic, and if you haven’t gone to the Alhambra location at least once, you can’t really say you know LA ice cream. This is the kind of rich, creamy, old-school ice cream you crave when you’re home plowing through a season of Law & Order you’ve already watched. The fudge sundae is a must. Warning: cash only.