Paradis Ice Cream

After Danish ice cream brand Paradis franchised its first U.S. location (Montrose, California) in 2009, a decade passed before the chain expanded to Orange County, when a new franchisee opened Dana Point and San Clemente locations. When those locations went independent and rebooted as Orange County Creamery in 2023, Orange County went Paradis-free until April 2026, when a new franchisee replaced a barbershop in Old Towne Orange. The small store has no interior seating, just counters displaying 18 ice cream and sorbet options alongside a handful of optional toppings; visitors can choose from scoop bowls ($6 to $10), waffle cones/bowls (+$1.50), sundaes or shakes ($10 each), and a small number of coffee, tea, and specialty drinks ($3.50 to $9), plus ice cream sandwiches ($8) and chocolate covered strawberries ($12 to $16).

The pitch with Paradis is that “ice cream” doesn’t exactly describe the primary dessert it offers in gelato-style freezer displays: Paradis calls it “a new kind of dessert, right between ice cream and gelato” based on a different balance of milk and cream that yields a “smoother, denser texture” like gelato with the “creamy richness people love in American ice cream.” In practice, the ice creams fall somewhere between traditional hard-packed and soft serve textures, as if hard ice cream was at just the right temperature to scoop easily and melt in your mouth. It’s not a night-and-day difference from traditional ice cream, but it’s different enough to be sort of interesting.

Though Paradis emphasizes texture, we found the flavors to be the more compelling part of the story – though a little trickier to pin down than most ice cream shops. No flavor menu appears on the Paradis U.S. website, and no signage was out at the Orange location when we visited, so we had to ask to suss out flavors; it’s unclear how many of them are stable from month to month, and how many rotate seasonally or otherwise.