Polly Ann Ice Cream

A long flavor list and a line that keeps moving

Choosing is the event at Polly Ann Ice Cream. The case runs well past the standard dozen flavors, and the line that forms outside is largely made up of people still making up their minds. Service is quick once you reach the front and friendly in the way neighborhood counters are, and the whole transaction takes a couple of minutes. This is a scoop shop rather than a cafe: no coffee program, no pastry case, and no reason to linger beyond finishing what you ordered. The line is part of the experience rather than a fault in it. It is one of the plainer and more useful shops in San Francisco, and it has stayed that way deliberately.

Outer Sunset since 1955

Polly Ann has been scooping in the Outer Sunset since 1955, which makes it older than most of the shopfronts around it and explains the way locals talk about it. Longevity is the real distinguishing fact here rather than any single flavor: a shop that has held the same stretch of the avenues through seven decades of the city changing around it, still working as an ordinary local ice cream stop rather than a destination dessert brand. The room is plain and the format has not been modernized. Out at this end of the city the fog does most of the weather, and a shop that people walk to in it has earned the habit rather than bought it.

Split the scoop

The practical trick is that a single scoop can be split into two flavors, which is the right move when the list is long and you cannot commit. Use it to pair something familiar with something you would never otherwise order, since the far end of the list is where the shop is most itself and where the choice actually means something. Beyond that there is not much strategy required: read the case, ask what is fresh, and order at the counter. Cones and cups both work, though a cone travels better if you are walking on afterwards. Go on a clear evening if you want to eat it outside, and expect a few minutes of waiting at weekends, when the line runs out the door and the choosing takes everyone longer than they expected.