Bi-Rite Creamery: Enticing Missionaries with Cups + Cones

The one-block stretch of 18th Street between Dolores and Guerrero probably features more culinary firepower than my entire L.A. neighborhood. Tartine Bakery anchors the eastern end. Delfina, Delfina Pizzeria and Bi-Rite grocery occupy the middle. Our reason for visiting the block: Bi-Rite Creamery, which was a 2006 offshoot of Sam Mogannam’s grocery. They source milk, cream and eggs from Straus Family Creamery near Pt. Reyes, meaning their core ingredients can’t get much better.

The 20-bin display case featured enticing flavors like chocolate coconut, roasted banana and balsamic strawberry.

My cup cradled scoops of brown butter pecan and oatmeal stout ice creams. Bi-Rite sourced Stout of Circumstance from nearby Magnolia brewpub to create the addictive roasted malt flavor.

Crème fraîche is a good test for ice cream, since the focus is on the cream. Bi-Rite’s version was nice and tangy, but it wasn’t as impressive as the adjacent honey lavender scoop, which was floral and intensely flavored. In general, Bi-Rite’s flavors were vivid and distinct.

Bi-Rite Creamery’s signature flavor is salted caramel, for good reason. The creamy combination is just classic. They also produce a good coffee toffee ice cream, using beans from nearby Ritual Coffee Roasters, San Francisco’s best coffeehouse. Unfortunately, there was no indication of which Ritual coffee Bi-Rite used. Ritual, like a lot of the top coffee roasters, source a steady rotation of seasonal single-origin beans. It would be fun to know which bean came into play.

We also scored a dark chocolate cookie straight from the oven, studded with bacon and only 75 cents. The hot, rich cookie was awesome with ice cream.

Bi-Rite produced my favorite San Francisco ice cream (so far). Of course, at the time of our visit, I still hadn’t been to Humphry Slocombe, which has more experimental flavors, so I wasn’t ready to crown Bi-Rite just yet.