You’re gonna need a bigger cone: 3 new ice cream shops in O.C. worth screaming for

Can we admit that ice cream tastes better when you get it from a scoop shop than your own freezer? It’s the difference between a movie at the theater versus the TV. Think about it: Your fondest ice cream memories didn’t happen at home while eating from a carton in the dark; they happened somewhere out there while you were on a date, celebrating an achievement or looking for something sweet to cap off a meal.

Whether it’s soft serve from McDonald’s drive-through or at Rite-Aid where a distinctive cylindrical scoop pushes out Chocolate Malted Crunch into that pencil-eraser shape with an audible “kachunk,” there’s nothing like the experience of a having ice cream when you’re out, especially during these dog days of summer.

Here’s a look at three shops in Orange County that have opened in the last year, where we hope you can make even more ice cream-based happy memories.

A small serving of Stricklands Ice Cream’s matcha flavor.

(Edwin Goei)

Stricklands Ice Cream

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

When Stricklands Ice Cream in Irvine was forced to close in December 2018 after the landlord refused to renew its lease, the shop ended a 15-year run and devastated its rabid fan base. Most fans were sad. Others were mad at the landlord. But at least a few were hopeful that because owners Randy and Donna Nettles didn’t shutter their shop voluntarily, there was a possibility it could open elsewhere.

But die-hard Stricklands fan Queena Mewers wasn’t taking any chances. The closest Stricklands franchise was now, after all, more than 2,000 miles away in Ohio. So she hatched a plan. She would secure as much of the remaining stock as possible and stash it in a new garage freezer she bought specifically for the purpose. She ended up with 20 flavors spread among an inventory of 32 quarts and 7 pints.

Six years in, her stockpile has only dwindled by half. And in that time, she learned a lot about the long-term storage of ice cream.

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

Once a container is opened, she observed, it should be eaten within two or three weeks. Flavors without mix-ins tend to fare better than those with them. Oreo bits degrade over time and pistachios don’t stay crunchy.

In the meantime, another Stricklands super fan, Neil Liu, had a plan of his own. He was going to bring Stricklands back to O.C. The former IT executive missed going to Stricklands with his family and was looking to get out of the corporate world. He contacted Stricklands’ offices in Ohio, found a spot for his franchise in Costa Mesa, and after a lot of red tape, managed to open the second coming of the only Stricklands west of the Mississippi this past February.

The gleaming churning machines that look like they came from the engine room of the Starship Enterprise were back and humming, producing the fresh ice cream that were sculpted into sharp, undulating peaks like the trees in Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” Like the Nettles before him, Liu developed flavors that were rotated out daily along with chocolate and vanilla. He brought back fan favorites like matcha and taro. And from staff and customer suggestions, 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 used to make. Nettles, with whom Liu is still in close contact, unfortunately had lost the recipe and couldn’t remember the ratios he used.

Enter Queena Mewers. After revealing to Liu that she still had some Nutella ice cream from her 2018 stockpile, she offered to bring it to taste and compare with the recipe he arrived at through trial and error.

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

Pampas Helado Argentina is located in Aliso Viejo Town Center.

(Edwin Goei)

Pampas Helados Argentinos

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

Ask any Argentinean and they’ll tell you that their indigenous ice cream, helado, is not ice cream, and it’s not gelato; it’s its own species of frozen dessert that should be recognized among the country’s more famous exports alongside soccer, wine, steak and the tango. Unlike American ice cream, air is not whipped into the mixture. And unlike its close cousin gelato, which was brought to Argentina by Italians, helado uses a high percentage of cream that results in a thicker and heavier body.

You don’t let it melt on your mouth as much as you chew it. Helado has a sticky and stretchy texture that almost mirrors taffy. And when it does melt, the flavors are big, rich and intense. Owner and certified nutritionist Sandra Hoyos, a native of Buenos Aires who emigrated to the U.S. in 1999, is not afraid to say that she believes she’s the first to bring authentic Argentinian helado to the West Coast. “I’m very sure nobody has done it,” she says.

To prepare for her shop’s opening at Aliso Viejo Town Center, she flew over a team of helado experts from Argentina to train her crew for three months in the summer of 2023. When Pampas Helados debuted last December, she had about 20 flavors on offer. But her top three are also the most Argentinian: traditional flan; the similarly egg-forward sambayon, which is flavored with Marsala wine; and the dulce de leche, which Hoyos notes is made with reduction of milk, not caramel.

All flavors are created in-house at the back of the store in a big machine, a process that involves pasteurization and freezing for 48 hours to let the flavors meld and maturate. When the helado is finally ready, it’s brought up to a secret serving temperature that allows it to be swirled and molded like clay around a cup or a cone. “Esa!”

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

(Edwin Goei)

Sweet Scoops Homemade Ice Cream

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

When you walk into Sweets Scoops Homemade Ice Cream in downtown Fullerton, the first thing you’ll notice is how quaint it looks. There are no TV screens. No superfluous decorations. A simple DIY craft wooden peg board presents the flavors hand-scribbled in colored chalk on rectangular pieces of slate.

On the other side of a counter, painted green, a solitary staff member offers tastes on metal spoons from unseen freezers. Behind her is the modest kitchen where the ice cream is made. Owner Celeste Herco and her staff develop her 15 flavors through a process that she admits happens mostly through listening to ideas and then trial and error.

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

“Right now, we’re looking at Hokey Pokey, which one of our customers indicated they enjoyed from their time in New Zealand,” she elaborated.

If there’s a charming, homegrown and improvisational personality to it all, it may or may not be on purpose. Before Herco opened Sweet Scoops in February, she had a 20-year career as a claims adjuster for the State Compensation Insurance Fund. She started making ice cream simply because she loves it.

“It brings a lot of memories of happiness, and I wanted to share that with everyone else,” she says.

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