Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream

Churned in the shop you buy it in

Each Molly Moon's makes its ice cream on site rather than trucking it in from a central plant, and that is the whole argument of the business. Ice cream that travels partly melts and refreezes on the way, which coarsens the texture and dulls the flavour; ice cream churned behind the counter it is scooped from does neither. The company has been saying so since Molly Moon Neitzel opened the first shop in Wallingford in 2008, and it has held the line while growing to a dozen locations, which is the harder version of the promise. Seasonal flavours turn over through the year, with Apricot Crisp, Blueberry Cheesecake, Cherry Chunk and Strawberry Sorbet among them, and sundaes are built from the same components, including a Cherry Pie Sundae with tart cherry pie filling.

A dozen neighbourhood counters

Molly Moon's is a Seattle chain in the local sense of the word. Wallingford came first, then Madrona and Queen Anne in 2011, Redmond in 2016, Columbia City in 2017 and Edmonds in the summer of 2023, alongside Capitol Hill, U Village, West Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland and the Waterfront. Each shop takes on the character of its setting. The Waterfront branch trades on the view and its place in a historic part of the city, U Village works as a stop between shops, and the older neighbourhood locations behave like corner stores with a queue outside on warm evenings. The company built small parklets outside the Wallingford and Madrona shops in 2014 under the city's pilot programme, which is a fair illustration of how the shops relate to the street.

What to order, and what not to expect

Come for scoops and sundaes and very little else. There is no pastry case and no kitchen; the menu is ice cream in cones and cups plus the composed treats built out of it. Order a seasonal flavour first, since that is where the kitchen actually shows its hand, and keep something plainer in the second scoop for contrast. If two people are sharing, a sundae gives you more of what the shop does than two cones will. Eater Seattle included Molly Moon's in its 2021 round-up of the best ice cream and gelato in the city, which matches the reputation the brand has locally after more than fifteen years of it.