You’ll Need a Bigger Cone: 3 New OC Ice Cream Shops Worth Claiming

Can you agree that ice cream tastes better when you buy it at an ice cream shop than when you buy it from your freezer? It’s the difference between a movie in a theater and a movie on TV. Think about it: Your fondest ice cream memories didn’t happen at home, eating out of a carton in the dark; they happened somewhere outside, while you were on a date, celebrating an accomplishment, or looking for something sweet to finish off a meal.

Whether it’s soft-serve ice cream from the McDonald’s drive-thru or Rite-Aid, where a distinctive cylindrical scoop pushes Chocolate Malted Crunch into that pencil-eraser shape with an audible “kachunk,” there’s nothing quite like the experience of eating ice cream while you’re outside, especially on those scorching summer days.

Here’s a look at three Orange County stores that opened last year, where we hope you can create even more happy ice cream memories.

Stricklands Ice Cream

1835 Newport Blvd., Suite B-121, Costa Mesa
Instagram: @stricklands.oc
Cones and cups from $4.75

When Stricklands Ice Cream in Irvine was forced to close in December 2018 after the landlord refused to renew its lease, the store ended a 15-year run and devastated its rabid fan base. Most fans were sad. Others were angry at the landlord. But at least a few were hopeful that since owners Randy and Donna Nettles hadn’t closed their store voluntarily, there was a chance it could open somewhere else.

But Queena Mewers, a die-hard Stricklands fan, wasn’t going to take any chances. The nearest Stricklands franchise was now, after all, more than 2,000 miles away in Ohio. So she came up with a plan. She would salvage as much of her remaining inventory as possible and store it in a new garage freezer she had purchased specifically for the purpose. She ended up with 20 flavors spread across a 7-quart, 32-liter inventory.

In six years, her supply has only halved. And in that time, she’s learned a lot about long-term ice cream storage.

“It stays fresh as long as you don’t open a completely full container,” she said.

Once the container is opened, she noted, it should be consumed within two to three weeks. Flavors without ingredients tend to keep better than those with them. Oreo pieces degrade over time, and pistachios don’t stay crunchy.

Meanwhile, another big Stricklands fan, Neil Liu, had a plan of his own. He was going to bring Stricklands back to OC. The former IT executive regretted not going to Stricklands with his family and was looking to get out of the corporate world. He contacted Stricklands’ Ohio offices, found a location for his franchise in Costa Mesa, and after a lot of paperwork, successfully opened the second Stricklands west of the Mississippi last February.

The gleaming churning machines, which looked like they had come straight out of the engine room of the starship Enterprise, were back and humming, churning out fresh ice creams sculpted into sharp, swaying peaks, like the trees in Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” Like Nettles before him, Liu developed flavors that rotated daily, along with chocolate and vanilla. He brought back fan favorites like matcha and taro. And at the suggestion of staff and customers, Liu added horchata and a pandan flavor, both of which were instant hits.

But one flavor eluded him: the Nutella ice cream that Randy Nettles made. Nettles, with whom Liu is still in close contact, had unfortunately lost the recipe and no longer remembered the proportions he had used.

Enter Queena Mewers. After revealing to Liu that she had some Nutella ice cream left over from her 2018 stash, she offered to bring it over to taste and compare it to the recipe he had developed through trial and error.

So the next time Liu features Nutella in his rotating flavor calendar, it will have been perfected—with a little help from Mewers, Stricklands’ biggest fan, collector, and accidental archivist.

Pampas Helado Argentina is located in downtown Aliso Viejo.

(Edwin Bon)

Argentine ice cream from the Pampas

26841 Aliso Creek Road, Suite B, Aliso Viejo
Instagram: @pampasheladosargentinos
Mugs starting at $6.50

Ask any Argentinian and they’ll tell you that their local ice cream, helado, is neither ice cream nor gelato; it’s a kind of frozen dessert in its own right that should be recognized among the country’s most famous exports, alongside football, wine, steak and tango. Unlike American ice cream, air is not incorporated into the mixture. And unlike its close cousin gelato, which was brought to Argentina by the Italians, helado uses a high percentage of cream, which results in a thicker, heavier consistency.

You don’t let it melt in your mouth so much as you chew it. Helado has a sticky, elastic texture that’s almost like caramel. And when it melts, the flavors are strong, rich, and intense. Owner and certified nutritionist Sandra Hoyos, a Buenos Aires native who immigrated to the United States in 1999, isn’t afraid to say she believes she’s the first to bring authentic Argentine helado to the West Coast. “I’m sure no one else has,” she says.

To prepare for the opening of her store in downtown Aliso Viejo, she brought in a team of gelado experts from Argentina to train her team for three months in the summer of 2023. When Pampas Helados debuted last December, it offered about 20 flavors. But her three favorites are also the most Argentinian: the traditional flan; the sambayon, also made with eggs, flavored with Marsala wine; and the dulce de leche, which Hoyos says is made with reduced milk, not caramel.

All the flavors are created on-site, in the back of the store, in a large machine, a process that involves pasteurization and freezing for 48 hours to allow the flavors to blend and mature. When the ice cream is finally ready, it is brought to a secret serving temperature that allows it to be swirled and molded like clay around a cup or cone. “Esa!”

A regular serving at Sweets Scoops includes two scoops, this one with mango sticky rice and jackfruit.

(Edwin Bon)

Sweet Scoops Homemade Ice Cream

135 E. Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton
Instagram: @sweetscoops.oc
Regular balls starting at $5.75

When you walk into Sweets Scoops Homemade Ice Cream in downtown Fullerton, the first thing you’ll notice is its quaint appearance. There are no TV screens. No extraneous decorations. A simple, handcrafted wooden sign features the flavors hand-scrawled in colored chalk on rectangular pieces of slate.

Across a green-painted counter, a lone employee offers tastings on metal spoons from unseen freezers. Behind her is the modest kitchen where the ice cream is made. Owner Celeste Herco and her team develop its 15 flavors through a process that, she admits, is mostly listening to ideas and then trial and error.

“For example, Thai tea was suggested to us by one of our customers,” she says.

“We are currently looking at Hokey Pokey, which one of our customers said they enjoyed while in New Zealand,” she said.

If Herco has a charming, down-home, improvisational personality, it may or may not be intentional. Before opening Sweet Scoops in February, she worked for 20 years as a claims adjuster for the State Indemnity Insurance Fund. She started making ice cream simply because she loves it.

“It brings back a lot of happy memories and I wanted to share that with everyone,” she said.

Some of those memories come from her native Philippines, where ube is king. Here, ube is one of her most popular flavors. But she’s especially proud of her sticky rice and mango, a Thai dessert staple that she reimagined as an ice cream using both dairy from Scott Brothers in Chino, coconut milk, ribbons of ripe mango, and a touch of pandan. It’s both light and refreshing while still being decadent—the perfect summer frozen dessert experience.