16 Of The Most Bizarre Salt & Straw Ice Cream Flavors So Far

For many of us, one of our most beloved childhood memories was visiting to our local ice cream shop and selecting a scoop (or two) from the colorful array laid out before us. As kids, we naturally gravitated towards the most neon-hued flavors (bubblegum or cotton candy, anyone?), rather than stodgy classics like rum raisin or — heaven forbid — pistachio.

If you know anything about Salt & Straw, the Oregon-based ice cream company, then you know that none of those flavors are what the business is built on. Cousins Kim and Tyler Malek began working together on an ice cream cart in 2011, despite neither of them ever having made ice cream before. They began making a name for themselves by creating ice cream flavors that pushed the boundaries of what the frozen treat could be. On the website, Salt & Straw state that it uses ice cream "as a blank slate for storytelling" and "fearlessly explore ingredients". When those ingredients include bone marrow, pig's blood, and real crickets, we'd say the brand is definitely crafting culinary adventures.

Read on to discover some of the most bizarre ice cream flavors Salt & Straw has come up with — at least so far. Which ones are you curious enough (or brave enough) to sample?

Olives have their place in a lot of dishes: pizza, salads, martinis. But ice cream? Only the innovative team over at Salt & Straw would think that the briny little flavor bombs belonged in the beloved after-dinner dessert. Most recently released as part of the Vault Series in 2023, the Black Olive Brittle & Goat Cheese ice cream was actually the first flavor to debut in Los Angeles when the company hit up the Golden State.

This unique ice cream flavor featured sweet-and-salty butter brittle pieces made from cured black olives mixed into an ice cream made from cave-aged goat cheese. If that sounds, well, odd, it was actually a surprising hit. On the brand's Instagram page announcing the temporary return of this sweet-meets-savory flavor, fans exclaimed, "This was amazing," "Please bring this one back," and "This is my favorite flavor!" Even celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern counts himself a fan of this ice cream (and we know how he feels about other West Coast icons like In-N-Out).

Sure, you could serve pumpkin pie for dessert at Thanksgiving, but why not really throw your guests for a loop and scoop up bowls of Salt & Straw's Caramelized Turkey & Cranberry Sauce ice cream instead? As part of the Friendsgiving series – originally released in 2021 — the ice cream company decided that every course could be dessert.

In the Caramelized Turkey & Cranberry Sauce flavor, turkey bacon was transformed into a sweet, savory, and buttery brittle with thyme and ground cubeb pepper before being sprinkled in among an ice cream that was swirled with house-made cranberry sauce. A little sweet, a little tart, and a little savory.

Mixing fruit into ice cream? Hardly revolutionary. Salt & Straw decided it'd been there, done that, when it released the ice cream series the Veggies You Crave in 2022. While we definitely found quite a few bizarre flavors in this particular series, the first on our list is the Green Fennel & Maple. Originally released in 2014, this ice cream was made by steeping fennel in an infused maple syrup, alongside both fennel pollen and fennel seeds, using all parts of the plant. Fennel naturally has a pungent, licorice-like flavor, which Salt & Straw said was subdued in this ice cream. Instead, it had a sweeter, juicier, slightly floral taste.

Fans were pretty excited about this ice cream, praising it on the brand's Instagram with remarks like, "This is the best flavor," "This has been my favorite since I first tried it in 2018," and, with a bit more frankness, "When is this coming back? Like enough with the mac and cheese."

Dangerously cheesy, or dangerously delicious? A new flavor for the Thanksgiving series, Cheesy Potato Casserole was first put on the menu in 2023. This was a salted vanilla ice cream with bits of savory potato cheesecake and a crispy cornflake crumble. Strange, yes, but it wasn't the first (and wouldn't be the last) time that Salt & Straw stirred some cheese into ice cream.

While we would never think a casserole-inspired ice cream would be worth writing home about, apparently customers were fans. On the brand's Instagram page, users wrote things like "Had it last night omg let me have seconds on that," and "This has quickly become my new favorite!"

Caramel is delicious, pickles are delicious, and bacon is delicious, but combining all of them into one ice cream flavor? You'd have to be pretty... something to try and pull that off. Well, Salt & Straw is just brave enough, bold enough, or reckless enough to make an attempt with the Bacon Biscuit Crumble & Pickle Caramel flavor, first released at the Miami location in 2021.

Candied bacon — and thus, caramelized bacon — is a pretty normal food, even if it's used in a dessert. After all, we don't raise an eyebrow at maple bacon donuts, do we? However, it's the pickle that's a bit of a head-scratcher. As you can see from the photo, the pickle caramel is, well, very pickle-colored. You can actually taste the pickle, but apparently it was surprisingly (and confusingly) delicious. Hey, if pickle popsicles can exist, why not pickle ice cream?

We love peaches and roasting them brings out an even more complex flavor, allowing that juicy peach flesh to char and caramelize. Because of that, we think this flavor would absolutely work, even if it's a little strange when you first hear its name.

First released in 2018 as part of Salt & Straw's Thanksgiving series, freshly picked sage infuses the ice cream for a subtly herbaceous base. Then, crunchy cornbread cookies are thrown into the mix alongside a ribbon of roasted peach jam and a splash of peach vinegar for brightness. This one, while sounding bizarre on the surface, is the one we'd be most excited to try, at Thanksgiving or any other time of year. Over at Tasting Table, reviewers lauded the peach jam, which they described as "fruity," "complex," and "balanced." However, those cornbread cookie crumbles were less successful, imparting a granular texture that just didn't work with the rest of the smooth ice cream.

We love a cheese board as much as the next person, but we might have reached our limit with the Pear & Blue Cheese flavor from Salt & Straw. While pears and blue cheese are divine when eaten together, we're less certain of their gastronomic symmetry when they're folded into ice cream.

Locally-grown Bartlett pears are candied low and slow to bring out their aromatic, juicy flavor. The pear chunks, as well as a sweet pear syrup, are then mixed into the ice cream alongside crumbles of cave-aged blue cheese from Oregon-based Rogue Creamery. According to the ice cream shop, this flavor was first released in 2011 and has been instrumental in converting those skeptical of savory elements in sweet ice cream. With a ranking of 4.7 stars from 122 reviews on their site, customers have appreciated how different and delicious this flavor is, although one almost-naysayer suggested that they could've gone harder on the blue cheese flavor.

One of the company's earliest creations to eschew convention, the Bone Marrow with Smoked Cherries flavor was the brainchild of co-founder and head ice cream maker Tyler Malek. To create this strange-sounding ice cream, cow bones are roasted before the marrow is scraped out, cooked, strained, and added to sweet cream. The process is painstaking, since two different kinds of fat (bone marrow and cream) need to be emulsified in just the right way to achieve that gorgeous, velvety texture.

That covers the first half of this flavor, but what about the cherries? Real cherries are pitted and smoked on cherry wood before being steeped in smoky tea and bourbon. This process gives the ice cream a more complex, deeper flavor, rather than your standard sweet cherry ice cream. The flavor is said to lean more savory than sweet, which can be confusing to the palate. This wasn't the only Salt & Straw flavor to feature bone marrow, either: A Caramelized Roti with Bone Marrow Fudge ice cream appeared in 2023.

The ability to emulsify two kinds of fats into a rich, velvety ice cream — as seen in the above Bone Marrow with Smoked Cherries flavor — is what led to the creation of the Arbequina Olive Oil ice cream. Now, compared to the others on this list, this flavor seems downright tame. It even looks vanilla.

This flavor blends high-quality extra virgin olive oil into sweet cream for a taste that's rich, buttery, and slightly grassy. While Salt & Straw has made a name for itself by creating some, well, unconventional flavors (as you know if you've read this far), this one excels in its simplicity. On the website, the ice cream has an impressive 4.7 star rating with 125 reviews. Fans praise the ice cream's herbal notes and custard-like texture. If this one sounds a bit too simple for you, Salt & Straw recommends pairing it with a scoop of the Chocolate Gooey Brownie flavor or Strawberry Honey Balsamic with Black Pepper flavor.

The beloved Mexican street food elote got the ice cream treatment in Salt & Straw's Veggies You Crave series. Elote is grilled corn that's slathered in mayo before getting dressed with chili, lime, and cotija. While we're certainly not opposed to adding corn to ice cream (in fact, we have an entire article about it), it was the other ingredients that gave us pause.

First off, the base of the ice cream is mayo-flavored. While mayo has its place on burgers, sandwiches, and even potato salad, we don't think it belongs in ice cream. The corn in this ice cream is transformed into a curd that winds its way throughout the base. Cotija cheese is then crumbled into this ice cream, and it's all tied together with fresh lime and Tajin seasoning. If it sounds like it wouldn't work, it seems like it didn't. On the Instagram post promoting this flavor, unenthused fans said things like, "Why?," "Mayo? No wayo," and "The lime tartness took away from the creamy corn and salty cheese. I won't get it again."

Leave it to Salt & Straw to have an OG flavor that's anything but vanilla. Back when it was operating in a scoop cart-capacity, co-founder Tyler Malek came up with the idea of the Brown Ale & Bacon ice cream. Partnering with a local brewery, Salt & Straw opted to use brown ale, known for its sweeter, maple-ish taste. The process of infusing beer into the ice cream is kept under wraps, but it leads to a deliciously malty, creamy flavor with just a hint of bitterness.

Mixed into the Brown Ale & Bacon flavor is, obviously, bacon. The creative minds behind the ice cream brand threw in some bacon brittle to add a salty, sweet, and savory element. Since its inception, this ice cream flavor has quickly become a fan favorite and allowed Salt & Straw to experiment with more ways to add beer to the roster. Within the 2024 Brewer series, the company worked with different breweries to achieve various flavors using, respectively, a porter, a stout, an ale, an IPA, and a lager.

Blend together sweet, savory, cheesy, and smoky into this ice cream that'll tickle all your taste buds (and maybe leave you scratching your head). First released in August 2024 as part of the Summer Picnic series, Salt & Straw's Smoked Mac & Cheese ice cream uses a base of pasta-infused ice cream that's then ribboned with a cheesecake swirl made from Beecher's Smoked Flagship Cheese, a robust, nutty cheese that's a blend of cheddar and Gruyère. Sprinkled throughout are brown butter bread crumbs to offer a savory finish and crunchy texture.

It seems that the confusing flavor was, in fact, bizarre. One TikTok user described it as "definitely savory, definitely smoky." Most reviews agree that the smokiness certainly comes through in this flavor, and the ice cream itself tastes remarkably like mac and cheese, which we have to admit is a pretty impressive feat. If you're going to talk the talk, you'd better walk the walk, right?

The third and final entrant on this list from the Veggies You Crave series, it's Salt & Straw's Red Chili Curry with Makrut Lime Crispy Rice. The only vegan ice cream in this particular series, the ice cream innovators made fresh curry paste from scratch using herbaceous seasonings like lemongrass, coriander, ginger, makrut lime, and red chili peppers. Paying homage to the traditional Southeast Asian flavors that inspired this creation, these spices were tempered with the help of coconut cream to make a rich, creamy (and dairy-free) base. Finally, for some added texture and a citrusy punch, a sprinkle of makrut lime rice crisp florentines were swirled throughout.

While the intention with this ice cream was to be unique, surprising, and refreshing, it did divide some customers. We assume that's to be expected when you make vegetable ice cream. While plenty were excited for this flavor's release, others took a hard pass. Well, you can't win them all, can you?

When we think of camping food, we think of s'mores, hot dogs, and maybe baked beans. As part of the Camping Series, Salt & Straw did offer a Campfire S'mores flavor, made with scotch and tea-smoked marshmallows. There was a baked beans flavor, too. What we don't think of as frequently is cornbread, let alone Skillet Cornbread with Candied Nettles and Pine Nuts. But Salt & Straw did.

This flavor featured a brown butter ice cream base speckled with cornbread crumbles, roasted pine nuts, and Tiger Mountain nettles. Salt & Straw actually took to the forest in 2019 when foraging for ingredients, hoping to explore what nature's bounty had to offer them (and what could be turned into ice cream). The trek into the wilderness paid off, it seems, as the Skillet Cornbread with Candied Nettles and Pine Nuts flavor — a Seattle-area exclusive — was considered delicious.

Have you ever had blood pudding? The traditional British food (also known as black pudding) is, contrary to its name, not a dessert. Instead, it's a pork or beef blood sausage that's fortified with oats or barley. Not exactly what you're hoping for when it comes to ice cream, probably. First released in 2014 in celebration of Halloween, Salt & Straw debuted Dracula's Blood Pudding, a flavor made with pig's blood, cinnamon, coriander, cubeb pepper, and brandy.

Plenty of coverage was made of the bizarre flavor choice, which struck people as a gimmick. In an interview with Today, Salt & Straw's head of research and development stated that the flavor was anything but: "Our goal was to make the pig's blood a present component, but in a way where the other ingredients round it out." As for the flavor? Most tasters say it tastes like spiced chocolate, with a minerality and saltiness. Are you brave enough to order a scoop when spooky season returns?

When we said bizarre, we meant it. Arguably the strangest of the bunch (and there's plenty of competition), this flavor employs real critters in its ice cream. Yep, actual crawling-in-your-garden bugs. Okay, so Salt & Straw does source bugs from Don Bugito, a California-based store that specializes in edible bugs, but you get the idea. They're still real bugs.

For the Creepy Crawly Critters flavor, matcha ice cream gets a burst of freshness from orange juice before being mixed up with dark chocolate covered crickets and coconut toffee brittle mealworms. According to Tasting Table, however, the bugs offer more of a pleasant crunchy texture than anything else. We knew matcha had an earthy, grassy flavor, but perhaps adding actual bugs is taking things just a shade too far? The bugs do boast some impressive health benefits, like being high in protein, omega-3s, amino acids, and fiber, but we don't know if we could get on board with this flavor, even with the addition of chocolate and toffee.

Static Media owns and operates Foodie, Tasting Table, and The Takeout.