This Hialeah ice cream shop was once a Dairy Queen, but it’s now our favorite place to get soft serve in Miami. It has a drive-thru, a couple of shaded tables in the back, and the absolute nicest people working the windows. You have three soft serve choices: vanilla, chocolate, or vanilla and chocolate twist—plus 29 different toppings. About half the menu here is dedicated to soft serve, and our favorite order is a small vanilla cone dipped in butterscotch.
Frice is just fantastic. They used to only sell wholesale to restaurants, but they finally got their own location inside The Citadel in Little Haiti—and this is great news. The flavors here are creative and delicious. Options change frequently, but the ones we’ve had (like guava chocolate chip and mamey with cookie butter) all made us do an unconscious little ice cream dance.
Whip N Dip is a Gables classic. If you grew up in the area, this was your neighborhood ice cream shop, your best friend worked here on the weekends, and you were terrified of getting burned by the Crispy Critters display (and kind of still are). Besides the nostalgia and high chances of running into high school classmates here, Whip N Dip has six flavors of soft serve we love. The regular ice cream is great too, and available in pretty much any classic flavor you can think of.
Below Zero is an Italian/Argentinian scoop shop on the outskirts of MiMo. It’s easy to miss from the street (and is pretty much just an ice cream display case inside) but the ice cream here is very good. They have classic flavors like rum raisin and mint chocolate chip as well as more interesting options like stracciatella, cannoli, and a perfectly balanced banana dulce de leche. There are other good desserts here too, like frozen alfajores and mini ice cream cakes.
Sweet Melody is making our favorite ice cream in Miami at the moment. They have a little ventanita out in West Kendall as well as a scoop shop in Palmetto Bay. Both serve a rotating selection of delicious and creative flavors like baklava ice cream made with rosewater and mascarpone cheese. Their guava and cream cheese flavor is also outstanding. And they’re always trying new things with flavors based on horoscopes or characters from The Office.
Wynwood’s Dasher & Crank is one of those shops where you’ll want to order everything—there isn’t a flavor that doesn’t sound (and taste) delicious here. Personally, we struggle to not order the Salty Beach (coconut ice cream, sea salt, and graham cracker) every time, but we occasionally break our streak for the ube flavor. We’ve seen them try everything from salmon and cream cheese to watermelon goat cheese ice cream here, and somehow they pull it all off.
Lakay roughly translates to “homestyle” in Haitian Creole, and that’s just the type of ice cream this Little Haiti spot specializes in. The ice cream here is made with evaporated milk, which gives each spoonful a richness without the extra fat of cream and a lightly caramelized flavor. Their kawosòl (AKA soursop/guanábana) ice cream is one of our favorites, but it tends to sell out. If that’s the case, the grenadya (AKA passion fruit) is a close second.
Peel is a little truck that parks outside Elev8tion Fitness on Saturdays and Sundays from about 10am-5pm. Their soft serve is made with coconut and banana—and not just any bananas either. They use rescued bananas from local produce shops that would otherwise go to waste. You can order it plain or with toppings like peanut butter, strawberry, or pineapple. It’s refreshing, light, and doesn’t give you an intense sugar high like some of these other scoops.
Azucar is a classic, both for architecture and ice cream. Their giant ice cream cone sculpture is one of our favorite landmarks on Calle Ocho, but the ice cream here is equally as impressive. They do a lot of Cuban-inspired flavors, like their most famous one, the Abuela Maria—with Maria cookies, guava, and cream cheese. Other flavors include cafe con leche and Oreo, sweet plantain, and dulce de leche.
Salt & Straw’s Wynwood and Coconut Grove locations have everything that made this national scoop shop so popular: fascinating flavors, local collaborations, and really, really good ice cream. Flavors rotate often, but we’ve tried (and absolutely loved) the bacon biscuit crumble with pickle caramel, pineapple coconut cream pie, and honey lavender. When we visited, they also had a Salty Donut guava and cheese collaboration and a chocolate tres leches made with Panther coffee.