Sweet Cow Ice Cream
ShopTennyson#49 of 50

Sweet Cow Ice Cream

Denver, Colorado

Photo: Shingo S. Ishida

A small-batch ice cream shop on Tennyson Street that makes everything from scratch with Colorado dairy. The flavors rotate constantly — salted Oreo, honey lavender, Mexican hot chocolate — and the texture is dense and creamy in a way that commercial ice cream never achieves. It's a neighborhood institution that happens to make some of the best ice cream in the state.

Insider tip

Whatever the seasonal flavor is. They rotate weekly, and the limited runs sell out for a reason.

Get Directions
See all 50 picks in Denver

More in Denver

You might also like

The Wolf's Tailor
EatRiNo

The Wolf's Tailor

A grain-forward restaurant from a former Frasca chef that mills its own flour and bakes some of the most extraordinary bread in Colorado. The pasta is hand-pulled and the whole operation runs on a quiet obsession with ancient grains and fermentation. It's ambitious without being fussy, and every plate has a story rooted in the dirt it came from.

Beckon
EatRiNo

Beckon

A hidden tasting-menu restaurant tucked behind Call, its casual sibling. You walk through what looks like a normal restaurant and end up in a 22-seat room where chef Duncan Holmes serves one of the most inventive prix fixe meals between the coasts. It feels like a secret because it basically is one. Denver's most ambitious kitchen, operating in near-silence.

Hotel Clio
StayHighland

Hotel Clio

A luxury property at the edge of Cherry Creek that feels more like a well-connected friend's penthouse than a hotel. The rooftop pool has unobstructed mountain views, the rooms are clean-lined and warm, and the service walks the line between attentive and invisible. It's the kind of place that makes you wonder why you ever stayed downtown.

Shop picks elsewhere

More shop we love

ShopPearl District · Portland, Oregon

Jacobsen Salt Co.

A salt company that hand-harvests sea salt from Netarts Bay on the Oregon coast. The Pearl District shop doubles as a tasting room where you can sample infused salts, salt-preserved honey, and salt caramels that will ruin you for the commercial stuff. It's the kind of place that makes you realize you've been seasoning wrong your entire life.

ShopUNLV · Las Vegas, Nevada

Zia Records

A Maryland Parkway record store that's been serving Vegas music nerds since 1980. Vinyl, CDs, used inventory deep enough to dig in, and a staff that knows the catalog. The Sahara location is bigger; the Maryland location is the spiritual home — close enough to UNLV that it's still where the city's serious record collectors come.