Handel’s Ice Cream

Founded in Ohio in 1945 – many decades before expanding to Orange County in 2018 – Handel’s Ice Cream is an interesting competitor in the local ice cream scene, occupying a conceptual space directly in the middle of the extremes represented by Dairy Queen and, say, Wanderlust Ice Cream. Dairy Queen remains profoundly basic, focusing on only two flavors of soft serve; Wanderlust serves hard-packed flavors that circulate every month and demonstrate globally inspired inventiveness. By contrast, Handel’s offers 45 hard-packed flavors per store per day, but they’re more traditional Americana: a lot of variations on graham crackers, fruits, and chocolate. And that formula seems to be working for them.

Having visited the Newport Beach location first, we were excited when the first of two new Handel’s shops opened in Irvine: Initially, we loved the incredible variety of choices, scanning and re-scanning the large sign boards to sort through all the different flavors. Some, including seasonal pumpkin variations and year-round graham cracker-laden scoops are quite good, and we came across fruit flavors that are rarely if ever seen outside of sorbets. Even though Handel’s apple and blueberry ice creams tend to be very cream-forward, there’s enough actual fruit flavor to distinguish them from plain vanilla, which is something.