The Best Ice Cream & Gelato in Santa Monica (2026)

There is no better argument for living on the Westside in August than the walk home with a cone melting faster than you can eat it. Santa Monica takes its frozen desserts seriously — small-batch gelato, chef-driven scoop shops, dairy-free everything, and a few old-school counters that have been cooling off locals for decades. Here’s how to eat your way through the best of it before summer slips away.

Small-Batch Gelato Done Right

Gelato is having a moment on the Westside, and for good reason: made fresh, in small batches, with less air and less fat than American ice cream, it delivers a denser, more intense hit of flavor. The best shops churn daily and rotate seasonal flavors — think stone fruit and berries right now, pistachio and stracciatella year-round. Look for the shops keeping their gelato in covered pozzetti wells rather than piled high under glass; it’s a small sign they care more about the product than the display. When a place is doing it right, the flavors taste like the actual thing they’re named after, and the texture is silky rather than icy.

The Classic Scoop Shops

Sometimes you don’t want an artisanal reduction of Sicilian pistachios — you want a big American scoop of something chocolate, in a waffle cone, on the beach. Santa Monica delivers there too. The stretch from Downtown Santa Monica down to the Pier is dotted with scoop counters built for exactly this, and there is a specific joy to eating a cone while walking the Santa Monica beach path with the ocean on one side. Bring napkins. Bring more than you think you need.

“There is no better argument for living on the Westside in August than the walk home with a cone melting faster than you can eat it.”

Dairy-Free & Vegan Options That Actually Deliver

This is Los Angeles, so of course the plant-based scene is thriving — and it has come a very long way from the chalky sorbets of a decade ago. Oat-milk and coconut-based ice creams around the Westside now hit the same creamy notes as the dairy versions, and many shops run a rotating vegan flavor or two alongside the classics. If you’re dairy-free, you no longer have to settle for the lone fruit sorbet at the end of the case. Ask what’s made in-house; the best plant-based scoops are the ones the shop develops itself rather than buys in.

Where to Take It

Half the pleasure is the destination. A cone tastes better on a bench in Palisades Park with the bluffs and the ocean in front of you, or perched on the sand at golden hour. If you’re making an evening of it, pair dessert with a stroll down Montana Avenue or a post-dinner walk after one of the Westside’s best restaurants. Ice cream is the rare treat that’s better standing up and moving than sitting down.

A Few Local Rules

Go early evening if you want to skip the after-dinner rush — the lines from 8pm on can be brutal on a warm night. Cash still moves faster than cards at the busier counters. And don’t sleep on the “boring” flavors: a shop that nails plain vanilla or a clean dark chocolate is a shop that will nail everything else. That’s the tell of a serious operation.