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Garden Creamery
Handcrafted Asian-inspired ice cream in the heart of San Francisco.
4.8(5 reviews)
retail-store
$
Handcrafted Asian-inspired ice cream in the heart of San Francisco.
Garden Creamery is a beloved ice cream shop in San Francisco's Mission District, renowned for its rich, unique Asian-inspired flavors like ube, pandan, and hojicha. We offer a rotating selection of handcrafted scoops, allowing up to three samples per customer, and feature add-ons like mochi and condensed milk. With a cozy, dog-friendly atmosphere and friendly service, we provide an unforgettable dessert experience that keeps locals and visitors coming back.
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Handcrafted scoops featuring unique flavors like ube, pandan, black sesame, and genmaicha, with a rotating menu.
Try up to three flavors before you buy to find your perfect match, with friendly guidance from our staff.
Enhance your scoop with options like mochi, condensed milk drizzle, or crunchy mix-ins for extra texture and flavor.
Refreshing, smooth sorbets such as strawberry lychee yuzu, made without ice crystals for a fruity treat.
Choose from sugar cones, cake cones, or cups to enjoy your ice cream, with quick service even during busy times.
Delicious ice cream. When it comes to scoop generosity, at the least it's delicious. Parking is non existent. During the day or during the evening hours, forget about finding a spot. Scooter? No parking problems. Still one of my favorite ice cream spots in the City.
A true 10/10 ice cream shop. I’m honestly not usually the world’s biggest ice cream fan (a foodie crime, I know), but I occasionally find a spot with expertly crafted, unique flavors that changes my mind. Garden Creamery is one of those gems — they have a slew of outstanding Asian-inspired flavors, perfectly crafted to be super rich, smooth, and (critically) not overly sweet. Several flavors also have fun crunchy mix-ins, which offer a great flavor and texture contrast. The store is super cute, with its cozy string lights and rows upon rows of doggo Polaroids, but it is quite small. The line frequently goes out the door and around the block, although it does move decently fast. Each guest is allowed to sample a max of four flavors, which helps keep the line moving but does make for hard decisions — every flavor looks drool-worthy! I sampled the genmaicha, salty kaya, hojicha, and black sesame, all of which were outstanding. The tea-based scoops had a great earthiness from the tea, with slight floral notes. The hojicha was wonderfully roasty and the genmaicha had toasted rice mixed in that helped amp up the flavor. The black sesame and a similarly nutty and roasted flavor, and it wasn’t overly sweet. The salty kaya was a wonderful sweet and savory combo, perfect for pairing with a sweeter or fruitier scoop, but also delicious in its own. It was hard to choose just two for my standard cup, but I eventually settled on the genmaicha and then went out on a limb for the fifth flavor that I wanted to try but couldn’t fit in, their strawberry lychee yuzu sorbet. Similar to the ice cream, the sorbet was super smooth and didn’t have a single hint of ice crystals; it was fruity, sweet but not overwhelming, and quite refreshing. It went wonderfully with the genmaicha (matcha and strawberry is a classic pairing, after all), and I loved the combo. I can’t wait to come back to try all their other flavors!
Garden Creamery easily ranks in my top five ice cream spots in San Francisco. My go-to order is the Ube ice cream with Mochi — and let me tell you, it’s the real deal. The Ube flavor is rich, creamy, and true to its roots. Add-ons like Mochi or a drizzle of condensed milk take it to the next level, making each bite a perfect balance of texture and sweetness. A must-visit for anyone chasing authentic, handcrafted ice cream in the city.
Me and my two kids saw some people on Valencia with delicious looking ice creams, followed their direction to Garden Creamery and were super impressed. They let us try a few and we enjoyed it all. Lil had had a sugar cone with ube and velvet chocolate on sugar cone, lil guy had cookies and cream with the strawberry ice cream and I had the salty Kaya and black sesame on a cake cone. When the guys strawberry started to fall they put in a cup for him. They were all super kind and it was a quick line. Yummy!!
Whenever we’re in the mission area, this is the one place my friends and I always go to. They have unique Asian flavors like ube, pandan, Japanese milk coffee, you name it. They have limited flavors that change pretty frequently and they’re all amazing, super rich and filled with flavor. There’s usually a line whenever we go but it’s so worth the wait. Not to mention they allow you to sample up to 3 flavors and the employees are always so friendly!! I can’t recommend this place enough/ can’t wait to go back again!!
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