Portland is an ice cream loving town, with dozens of local scoop shops throughout the city and flavors ranging from classic (marionberry crisp) to creative (matcha with chocolate-covered crickets). But a creamery’s vanilla often offers the truest test of good ice cream, without hiding behind flavors like fruit and chocolate.
Grocery store freezers stock many varieties of vanilla, from straight-up vanilla to “old-fashioned” vanilla to vanilla bean. For this Taste Test, we chose regular vanilla, or when not available, vanilla bean, from several local and national brands. Whether you plan to eat it straight from the carton, spoon it out of a sundae, or serve it alongside a hearty slice of pie or birthday cake, here are the best vanilla ice creams for your freezer.
Best Vanilla Ice Cream
Tillamook Old-Fashioned Vanilla
This local do-it-all dairy was a clear crowd favorite. Texturally, it’s got a bit of fluffiness that melts in your mouth upon impact, with a bright, snowy-white color. “Crisp,” said one tester. “Pure,” noted another. “Clean,” another piped in. While we’d gladly eat this one on its own (one staffer admitted to having done so the night before), it also plays nicely with other desserts. “It’s the perfect ice cream to go with birthday cake,” commented a tester, immediately conjuring memories of childhood parties, eating chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream with a plastic fork on a paper plate. This is the one that our testers came back for, reaching for second, third, and even fourth scoops.
Salt & Straw Double Fold Vanilla
Portland’s most famous premium scoop shop might be known for its wacky flavors, but its straight-up vanilla is a strong entry: intense vanilla bean flavor, with plenty of visible vanilla flecks. Compared to co-winner Tillamook, Salt & Straw’s vanilla is actually less creamy and has a denser, almost gelato-like consistency. Tillamook lists cream as the first ingredient and uses eggs, while Salt & Straw starts with milk and eschews eggs. We’re more likely to pair Salt & Straw with pie, or eat it alone on a cone or in a bowl, leaving Tillamook for cake pairings or an excellent base for a sundae or root beer float.
Decent Vanilla Ice Cream
Umpqua Vanilla
This ice cream struck a happy medium between fluffier ones like Tillamook and denser scoops like Häagen-Dazs. The vanilla flavor was also more pronounced than other brands. “I like the richness of it,” said one tester. We could see Umpqua pairing particularly well with an apple or berry pie.
Häagen-Dazs Vanilla
Häagen-Dazs’s dense, hard-to-scoop texture is apparent upon serving, but its creaminess didn’t necessarily come through in the flavor. “It actually tastes less creamy to me,” noted a tester. While some preferred the clean, bright vanilla flavor, others found it uninteresting compared to other options.
Skippable Vanilla Ice Cream
Alden’s Old-Fashioned Vanilla
One word to describe this ice cream: unremarkable. It’s not light and airy like Tillamook or creamy like Umpqua or Häagen-Dazs. But despite its middle-of-the-road texture, it gets some points for flavor. “It’s very vanilla-y,” said one ice cream eater.
Cosmic Bliss Vanilla Bean Nirvana
Cosmic Bliss is a Eugene-founded ice cream brand, formerly known as Coconut Bliss. A flagship shop in the Pearl District opened in late 2022. While it made its name in nondairy frozen desserts, the company also has a line of grass-fed dairy ice cream. We tried Cosmic Bliss’s grass-fed dairy vanilla, with disappointing results. The texture was thick and creamy, but not necessarily in a pleasant way, and the flavor was muddled. “It’s giving chemical,” said one tester, who was puzzled by the ice cream’s strange aftertaste, despite its wholesome, innocuous ingredients list. (The only unusual ingredient was coconut syrup instead of cane sugar.) “It tastes like fermented ice cream,” said another, a perfect explanation of its spot on our list.
Dreyer’s Vanilla
Though this is the brand that some of our testers grew up eating, this uninspired ice cream didn’t bring back much nostalgia. There was little vanilla flavor, and little to nothing in the way of creaminess. Not surprising, given that this ice cream’s first ingredient is skim milk. “Kind of boring,” said a tester. “It reminds me of ice milk,” said another.
