Top 5 Ice Cream Shops In Denver

Summer in Denver means two things: complaining about the heat and standing in line for ice cream. Here are my five favorite spots to cool down — ranked, debated and thoroughly taste-tested. You’re welcome, Denver. Also, Coconut is the best flavor and I won’t be taking questions.

5. Bonnie Brae Ice Cream

This south Denver institution has been scooping since 1986, and the line out the door hasn’t gotten any shorter. If you show up on a Saturday and there isn’t a wait, check your calendar — it might be February. Order the Bonnie Brae Bliss, a coconut ice cream swirled with caramel ribbon and brownie bits that will make you forget you ever had summer fitness goals.

4. Sweet Action

The punk rock spirit of Baker lives on in every scoop at Sweet Action, where the flavor board reads like a fever dream your taste buds had after a music festival. Seasonal rotating flavors mean you’ll never get bored — or be able to order “the usual” without sounding like a liar.

3. Liks Ice Cream

Open since 1976, Liks is older than most of the apartment buildings in Cheesman Park and twice as charming. With flavors ranging from Samoan Cookie to Banana Foster, Liks proves that being a neighborhood staple for nearly 50 years isn’t a fluke — it’s a flex.

2. Heaven Creamery

Here’s your coconut alert, folks. Heaven Creamery makes its own coconut cream and oat milk in-house, and the results are borderline spiritual — which tracks, given the name. Their flavors are “unique, bizarre and extravagant,” and honestly, so is anyone willing to drive across town for a scoop. Guilty as charged.

1. Little Man Ice Cream

Was there ever any doubt? Little Man’s 28-foot-tall milk can is Denver’s most photographed landmark that isn’t a mountain. With 4,500-plus Yelp reviews and a flavor lineup that includes Coconut Almond Fudge and Salted Maple Pecan, this is the shop that turns tourists into regulars and regulars into people who “just happened to be in the neighborhood” four times a week.