Mint chocolate chip is the most argued-about flavour in the case, and Los Angeles has a stronger claim on the argument than most cities. Baskin-Robbins was founded in Glendale in 1945 by two brothers-in-law, and mint chocolate chip was on the board from the beginning — one of the original flavours that made the thirty-one famous. Nine decades later the city still holds the two opposing versions of the flavour within a twenty-minute drive of each other, and the difference between them is visible before you taste anything.
The good versions are spread across Alhambra, Hollywood and the Westside, and none of them are open as late as you would like. Ask Karpo which counters are still serving tonight, which do the pale leaf-infused version and which do the green one, and how to string two of them into a route that does not involve crossing the city twice.
Green or white is the entire argument
Mint oil is clear. Mint leaves steeped in cream produce something between off-white and a very pale sage. Every bright green scoop you have ever eaten got that colour from food colouring, which entered the flavour as a mid-century marketing decision rather than a culinary one — green reads as mint on a menu board in a way that a beige scoop does not.
This is not an argument about quality, whatever purists say. A dyed extract-based mint chip can be excellent and a leaf-infused one can be flat. But it is a reliable signal about what the shop is doing: a pale scoop almost always means someone steeped actual leaves that morning, and a bright one almost always means extract and a bottle. Knowing which you prefer saves you the disappointment of ordering the wrong tradition.
Fosselman's, Alhambra — the oldest counter still doing it
Fosselman's at 1824 West Main Street in Alhambra is the reference point. The present company dates to 1937 and the family's ice cream business traces back to 1919, which makes it the oldest continuously family-run scoop counter in the region. The base recipe has not changed in decades. What has changed is the board around it: as the San Gabriel Valley's population shifted, the shop added Oaxacan chocolate, black sesame and macapuno.
The detail worth knowing is what survived that expansion. Mint chip never came off the permanent list — it sits alongside rum raisin and rocky road as one of the flavours the shop treats as non-negotiable, which in a case that now runs to dozens of options is a statement about what the regulars actually order. It is also the version most Angelenos over forty are unconsciously comparing every other mint chip against.
Sweet Rose Creamery — the leaf-infused version
Sweet Rose Creamery, founded in 2010 by Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan, makes the clearest example of the pale school on the Westside. The Fresh Mint Chip is built on organic spearmint from Kenter Canyon Farms, steeped rather than extracted, with chocolate chips made in-house rather than bought in. The result is a scoop that reads as herbal rather than cooling, closer to a mint leaf than to a mint sweet.
Spearmint is the specific choice there, and it explains the flavour more than the word 'fresh' does. Peppermint carries the sharp menthol note that people mean when they complain that a mint chip tastes like toothpaste; spearmint is rounder and slightly sweet. If you have written the flavour off entirely, this is the one that tends to reverse the verdict.
Mashti Malone's — the Hollywood outlier
Mashti Malone's on North La Brea has been a Hollywood institution since 1980, and it got its name because the founder bought a parlour called Mugsy Malone and could only afford to change the first word. It is known for the Persian side of the case — saffron, rosewater, faloodeh — and that reputation slightly buries the fact that the standard flavours are held to the same standard.
The mint chip there is the one regulars quietly rate, specifically because it avoids both failure modes: it is not aggressively minty and it does not taste like toothpaste. In a city where mint chip is usually either a nostalgia purchase or a purist's project, a shop that treats it as simply another flavour to get right is doing something unusual.
Thrifty, and the year the green scoop nearly disappeared
No mint chip conversation in Los Angeles gets far without Thrifty. The ice cream launched in 1940, alongside the cylindrical scoop that gives the flat-topped cylinder every Angeleno recognises, and it has been produced at a plant in El Monte since 1976. The green mint chip in a stack of cylinders is arguably the single most recognisable ice cream image in Southern California.
It came genuinely close to vanishing. Rite Aid — which had owned the brand since 1996 — filed for Chapter 11 in May 2025 and announced the closure of 500 stores, taking the in-store scoop counters with them. The brand was then bought in July 2025 for $19.2 million by Hilrod Holdings, the family office linked to Monster Beverage executives Hilton Schlosberg and Rodney Sacks, who committed to keeping the classic recipes while widening distribution.
The practical situation now is different from the one most people assume. The counters inside Rite Aid stores are largely gone, but independent and franchised scoop locations survived, and the company runs a store locator covering California, Nevada and Arizona to find them. Nationwide shipping of tubs and cup twelve-packs opened in May, and expanded retail availability has been rolling out through 2026. If you want it scooped rather than boxed, check the locator before you drive.
Practical notes
The efficient version of this is two stops, not five. Fosselman's in Alhambra and any surviving Thrifty counter in the San Gabriel Valley make one eastern route; Sweet Rose on the Westside and Mashti Malone's in Hollywood make a western one. Do not try to combine them on a weekday evening. If you want to settle the green-versus-pale question properly, order both in one cup at a shop that carries a dyed version and taste them side by side rather than a week apart. Most independent counters close between 9pm and 10pm, earlier than the restaurants around them, so this is an early-evening errand rather than a late-night one.
Tags: #MintChocolateChip #IceCreamLA #LosAngeles #Fosselmans #Alhambra #SweetRoseCreamery #MashtiMalones #ThriftyIceCream #LADessert #ScoopShop #CoffeeAndDessert #SanGabrielValley #LAFood #IceCream
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Want to know which counters are still open tonight, which ones make the pale leaf-infused version, and where the nearest surviving Thrifty scoop is? Ask Karpo for the latest Los Angeles ice cream updates, a two-stop route that does not cross the city twice, and a backup if the shop you wanted has already closed.
