San Francisco · ice cream
Mitchell's Ice Cream
A 1953 family ice cream parlor that built its own manufacturing room by hand and has run the same batch freezer and the same 16% butterfat formula since opening, while building its most distinctive line, mango and other Filipino-community flavors imported directly from the Philippines, in direct response to who moved into the neighbourhood around it.
What to order
Mango, named on the business's own site as the top seller since its early-1960s introduction
What we know
- Made fresh in the shop every day on a 10-gallon Emery Thompson batch freezer, per the business's own history page
- 16% butterfat held constant from the 1953 opening recipe through today, named explicitly on the same page
- Imports exotic fruit directly from the Philippines to supply its tropical flavor line, a response to the neighbourhood's changing demographics through the 1960s onward
- First to introduce mango ice cream to the Bay Area in the early 1960s; it remains the shop's top seller
- Continuous family ownership across three generations since 1953, in a building the family fought the city to save from demolition in 1947
- 40 flavors made daily
- Status
- open
- Address
- 688 San Jose Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110
- Maker
- Larry and Jack Mitchell, founding brothers; the shop is still owned by Larry Mitchell and his wife Claire, with their children Brian and Linda managing day-to-day operations
- Opened
- 1953
- Website
- mitchellsicecream.com/
- Last checked
- 2026-08-21
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