5 of the most spectacular ice cream treats and sundaes in the D.C. area (2024)

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200 Commerce St., Alexandria.

Brandon Byrd grew up in Wisconsin, and when he was making trips back as an adult, he found himself seeking out custard. Now he makes gallons of Wisconsin-style custard each day for Goodies, which he started in 2012 as a food truck operating out of a vintage van. In 2021, building on the van’s popularity, he converted a nearly century-old icehouse in Alexandria to open a storefront location with a 1950s-inspired soda fountain menu of shakes, floats and other treats.

Byrd’s custard — made with his own secret recipe using locally sourced ingredients — is incorporated into over-the-top desserts featuring baked goods, such as the Custardwich, a sandwich of vanilla or chocolate custard between two pieces of fresh pastries. The Big Apple is a standard on the menu, consisting of the rich, creamy custard between halves of an apple cider doughnut, baked fresh each morning, and topped with homemade caramel sauce. The Browniewich, featuring custard between slices of a thick chocolate brownie topped with chocolate sauce, is also a menu staple, but other creations rotate through, like Custardwiches with lemon pound cake, Oreo cupcake, red velvet cake, bread pudding and rum cake.

Goodies is a labor of love for Byrd, who wakes up early, often at 3 or 4 in the morning, to get in to work, make custard and start baking. As he puts it, “I love frozen custard and want to bring a piece of the Midwest out here.” Sundaes $8; Custardwiches $10.

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3279 M St. NW.

Pasha Castle’s legacy goes back three generations to Lebanon, where a grandfather of one of the owners was the proprietor of a popular sweets shop. Now his grandson Elias Bitar, along with three business partners, has brought his family’s tradition to Washington.

Pasha Castle imports a range of flaky, perfectly sweetened baklava varieties from Turkey and Lebanon. Its Lebanese-style ice cream, called booza, is made in Maryland. Booza has a characteristic stretchy texture that results in it melting very slowly, ideal for this region’s hot summers. Ashta, or clotted cream lightly infused with rosewater, is the most traditionally Lebanese of the 16 ice cream flavors available, which also include pistachio, cheesecake and mango.

The shop’s utterly extravagant ice-cream-and-pastry combinations are photo-worthy. The Pasha Special features a wedge of pistachio baklava nearly the size of a slice of cake, cut in half horizontally, with three sizable scoops of ice cream sandwiched between the two layers. Pistachio Paradise consists of three shamrock-green pistachio baklava rolls topped with two scoops of ashta ice cream, then finished with a layer of sugary fairy floss and sprinkled with pistachio bits. These and two other gluttonous dessert specials on the menu can easily serve two to three each. Ice cream from $4.99; specials $10.90-$16.62.

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At a traditional ice creamery, there are dozens of frozen flavors to choose from, but at the newly opened Coneacopia, it’s the cones that come in an enticing array of choices. “I said, ‘What if the main event was the cones?’” explains Avril Johnson, who established the “conefectionary” with her sister Nanette, a longtime home baker.

Coneacopia offers handmade waffle cones in 24 flavors — such as deconstructed chocolate chip cookie, brown butter and brown sugar, white chocolate raspberry, and key lime pie — which are filled with a dense, satisfying vanilla soft-serve. Top the cone with up to three flavors of “cone dust,” or crumbled cone pieces; the Pink Panther, a salted strawberry cotton candy cone that incorporates Pop Rocks, offers extra crunch. Adding to the indulgence, some of the sauce options are spiked with alcohol, including strawberry daiquiri, caramel bourbon and chocolate cognac — thanks to the business being housed in the entry level of Rendezvous, an upstairs bar and lounge. For kids, there are petite cones in sugar cookie and animal cracker flavors.

The Johnson sisters grew up in the D.C. area, and Avril attended American University, which also inspired a cone. The cookies-and-cream-flavored Yin to My Yang is a shout-out to the Oreo chocolate chip cookies at the campus convenience store that Avril and her roommates particularly loved. Years later, Nanette re-created the taste for Coneacopia. Vegan soft-serve and cones available. Cones: $8-$10.

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Mikki Bayawa grew up in a Filipino and Japanese family in New Jersey. When she moved to the D.C. region, she found herself thinking about the foods she missed. Taiyakis, a gently sweet fish-shaped waffle, baked until golden brown and often served as a street food in Japan, were at the top of her list. During the pandemic, Bayawa bought a taiyaki pan and posted her pastries on Instagram; before long, she had become a fixture at local farmers markets.

The opening of Rice Culture’s permanent store in December 2023 enabled Bayawa and her partner, Kevin Tsai, to pair taiyakis with homemade soft-serve ice cream. “My first job growing up was at Carvel, and in college, my first job was at a frozen yogurt store, so my childhood stretches into these taiyakis,” Bayawa says. The soft-serve is offered in Asian-influenced flavors including pandan, ube, corn, mango and rotating choices like blueberry cheesecake.

While other venues have combined taiyakis and soft-serve, Rice Culture amplifies the taste by adding optional custard fillings — such as ube, red bean and double-stuffed Oreo — to the taiyakis before they are baked. Build an elaborate, splurge-worthy dessert with a base of soft-serve (single-flavor or swirled) and a taiyaki (plain or filled), topped with a choice of ube wafers, Pocky sticks, Oreos or Biscoff cookies and, for even more texture, sprinkles like matcha powder or toasted coconut. Soft-serve $7.50, with taiyaki $8.50.

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“Our overarching goal has always been to change the way ice cream is perceived in this country: These flavors should not be exoticized,” says Pooja Bavishi, whose ice cream is inspired by the South Asian spices and aromas “that were so ubiquitous to my growing up.” The Indian American entrepreneur launched Malai — loosely translated as “cream of the crop” — as an ice cream cart in New York in 2015, followed by a storefront in Brooklyn in 2019. Its new D.C. shop is just the second bricks-and-mortar location.

Malai’s eggless ice creams include ingredients such as saffron, turmeric, star anise, fennel and dates, in daring flavor combinations that feel almost luxurious. Cardamom pistachio crumble blends in crispy nankhatai, a shortbread from Bavishi’s parents’ region of India that’s made with ghee, pistachios and a strong dose of cardamom. The masala chai, drawing on a family recipe heavy on ginger and black pepper, was inspired by her sister noting that “chai-flavored things are everywhere, but not in the same way that we make it.” Passion fruit-cilantro sorbet is coolly refreshing, while the red chili chocolate finishes with a kick. A dozen of the 60-some flavors are served in the store at a time, with more sold as pints.

Bavishi describes the opening of her 14th Street shop as “a little bit like a homecoming” — she previously worked at nonprofits in Washington. For its D.C. expansion, Malai has created a special flavor, inspired by the city’s cherry trees, that combines sour and black cherries with the smokiness of black cardamom. Scoops: $6-$9.