Walnut Creek, California’s ice cream renaissance started out slowly. For decades, there was San Francisco Creamery, the city’s iconic old-school ice cream place.
Later, high-tech upstart Lottie’s arrived in Walnut Creek. This unique ice cream shop pasteurized its own raw milk on-site, creating some of the richest ice cream around.
For years, a combination of old and new persisted, with fairly few new entries.
Recently, though, the Walnut Creek ice cream scene has exploded.
In addition to San Francisco Creamery and Lottie’s, several new ice cream places have either recently opened or are on the way.
The most exciting one is Handel’s, a 45-year-old ice cream chain that started in the Midwest and recently opened a branch in Walnut Creek. With over 20 flavors made fresh every day, Handel’s Walnut Creek location is already wildly popular.
We stopped by and wrote a full review. We’ve visited multiple times and found it to be packed.
Handel’s even has a snazzy new Tesla Cybertruck to advertise their location!
In addition to the launch of Handel’s, we’ve learned a new ice cream place, Annie’s Italian Gelato, is coming to Walnut Creek.
Annie’s is located right next to the new dumpling place. We’re not sure when it will open or what it will serve exactly, but our guess would be (surprise!) Italian gelato.
On top of that, Walnut Creek restaurant Gott’s Roadside serves soft-serve ice cream from Strauss Creamery, with rainbow sprinkles and gummy bears, and Shake Shack has ice cream too.
If you’ve been counting with us, you’ll see that means there are now four ice cream stores within about a five-block radius in downtown Walnut Creek—and six if you walk a little further to Broadway Plaza, where you can add Haagen Daz to the list.
This chain ice cream store has a location right in the middle of the popular outdoor shopping mall.
And that’s just downtown Walnut Creek! Expand to the limits of the city, and you’ll find classics like Baskin-Robbins, new entrant Devil & Angel, and more. By conservative count, Walnut Creek has at least 10 dedicated ice cream places within the city limits.
Will all these places make it, or are we in the middle of an ice cream bubble? We’re not sure, but we do know that we’re happy to see the city’s ice cream scene thriving—we can’t wait to get a cone at one of these places!
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Snazzy? More like s’Nazi