Bugs + Ice Cream: Salt & Straw's October Flavors

The daring dessert maker takes on some spooky sweets for the Halloween season.

We don't know when the last time you got double-dog-dared was -- it could have been three decades ago or three days -- but we're pretty sure you're due to be dared.

Or to dare someone. And here's your flavorful and fanciful and frightastic opportunity: Salt & Straw, the creative-minded ice-creamery born in Portland and now on Larchmont Boulevard in LA, is going all out on the eerie front in terms of its October-only seasonal offerings.

Let's start with the one most likely to encourage the double-dog-daring among friends as they stand at the order counter: Creepy Crawly Critters. Described as a "fresh green-grass ice cream," your treat will come studded with several several-legged bugs, all trapped in "amber" (make that "fragments of hard candy").

Ants and grasshoppers and other ground-scurrying insectia will be found embedded in your ice cream.

And you thought bugs only got mixed up with ice cream when you accidentally dropped your scoop on the sidewalk. 

The other choices are just as mischief-merry and rife with dastardly deliciousness. The Great Candycopia dumps the plastic pumpkin bucket, the one full of candy on Halloween night, into a scoop of ice cream. Look for "big chunks of Snickers, Whoppers, and Peanut Butter Cups" in this goodie.

Candy Corn goes all white-orange-and-yellow-striped on ya, flavor-wise, while A Potion of Malicious Delight remains a Jekyll-inspired mystery. No, really: Salt & Straw isn't saying much, though fruit tones and spice play straight-from-the-doctor's-basement-lab roles.

The Scene

Want to find new things to do in Los Angeles? The Scene's lifestyle stories have you covered. Here's your go-to source on where the fun is across SoCal and for the weekend.

Festive funnel cakes are on the Knott's Merry Farm food line-up, oh yum

Disneyland just unveiled the Haunted Mansion's ghoulishly gorgeous new grounds

Finally, there's Essence of Ghost, "a chilling cold flavor that will make you think you've tasted an apparition." Intriguing, truly, to think of a flavor not as chocolate or strawberry but as a temperature, and a chilly one at that.

Shivers and so forth. So, are you in a full state of pre-double dog dare? The spooky flavors shall pass through the walls of the Salt & Straw shop, and into cups ready for eating, on Friday, Oct. 2.

Contact Us