The 21 Best ice cream shops in America

Against all climatic odds, New England has long been a hotbed of ice-cream ingenuity. Mount Desert Island Ice Cream—Linda Parker’s artsy, blue-hued trio of scoop shops in Bar Harbor and Portland, Maine—honors that heritage, combining the quaint charm of the seashore with a cosmopolitan flair. On the one hand, you get such nostalgic nods to regional cookery as Indian pudding and blueberry-sour-cream crumble; on the other hand, you get savory-toned, modern flavors like celery leaf, chocolate-wasabi and miso-butterscotch. What you don’t have is three hands, which is too bad, because then you could get a Chiller (Parker’s sorbet-based take on a Slurpee) to boot.