A Sweet Escape in the Golden State
Sweet California: A Culinary Guide to Tasty Treats Across the State

Whether it’s a summer day with soaring temperatures or a cool, cloudy winter day, you’re likely to see a line of eager people waiting for a scoop (or three) at Gunther’s in Sacramento. Opened in 1940, Gunther’s has been using the same recipe for over 80 years, and it’s the sort of consistency you can taste. Lush and creamy, the ice cream here uses a higher-than-average amount of butterfat cream than most ice creams. Gunther’s offers 50 flavors of ice cream, from Birthday Cake to Coconut Pineapple to Swiss Orange Chip, all of which you can get in a classic sundae if you so choose. 

The shop is hard to miss, thanks to its retro-futurist architecture and the neon sign of “Jugglin’ Joe”, who tosses a scoop of ice cream into the air with one hand, and magically catches it in a cone. The saying goes that if Joe ever misses, your ice cream is free!

We’ve all eaten fortune cookies, but very few of us have seen how they’re made. A quick visit to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company can change all that, while offering a taste of fortune cookie flavors you’ve probably never heard of before.

Tucked away in a pedestrian alley in San Francisco’s Chinatown, this tiny factory has been family-operated since 1962. While other cookie makers turned to machines to build their treats, the Chang family stuck to making all their cookies by hand. Between three employees, they can make up to 10,000 per day. 

The entire process can be viewed in a visit to their factory and store. The cookie makers must peel the hot cookies off a press, place a fortune in the center, and quickly fold it into shape before it cools and hardens. In recent years, they’ve also added fun new flavors like strawberry, chocolate, and green tea that can be either strawberry-glazed or chocolate-coated. They even make a giant fortune cookie! 

If you smell bread near the northern edge of Death Valley, it’s likely coming from a roadside bakery owned by descendants of Dutch immigrants who, unexpectedly, specialize in a Basque baking technique.

Basque sheepherders came to California from Spain during the Gold Rush of 1849 in search of economic opportunities. What the Wild West couldn’t offer them, however, was decent bread. Their best attempt at the legendary loaves of their homeland—a bread shaped by hand and baked in stone ovens, called Sheepherder’s Bread—eventually became popular among several Southern California towns and is survived by Schat’s Bakery to this day.

The Dutch bakery produces 25,000 loaves per day, aside from an array of Dutch sweets like oliebollen (deep-fried donuts), gevulde koeken (Dutch Almond cookies), and pullaway Dutch crunch.

Tucked between an organic juice shop and a psychic reader is Sprinkles Cupcakes. By selling eccentric and creative cupcake flavors like cannoli, triple cinnamon, and nutella french toast, they’ve become a landmark for LA’s cupcake-loving community. If the line at the store is too long, visitors can make a withdrawal from their signature Cupcake ATM, located just outside.

The 24-hour cupcake dispenser is stocked with 600 cupcakes daily and offers a rotating selection of sweets. For between $4 and $6, a robotic arm will retrieve your selected cupcake and drop it in the cupcake chute for you to enjoy any time, night or day.

If there’s a soda from your childhood that you haven’t seen for years, one that you treasured immensely before it disappeared from local vending machines, it may not be out of production. There’s a good chance it’s at Galco’s Soda Pop Stop.

Galco’s specializes in selling obscure sodas—over 750—from around the country and beyond. There’s classics like Moxie Original, Bubble Up, and Ale 8-1; imports like Japanese melon cream soda or South American coconut soda; and oddball creations like a Rhode Island spruce soda.

If it’s food you’re after, the 120-year-old shop also sells novelty candies as well as a lineup of classic deli sandwiches, headlined by the “Blockbuster.” This is a cold-cut sandwich on sourdough bread that Roc Marciano allegedly tasted in the 1950s before exclaiming, “Wow! This is a real blockbuster.”

If you’re a movie buff, there’s a chance you’ve already seen Randy’s Donuts on the silver screen. Whether you saw it in Iron Man 2, Mars Attacks, 2012, or Zootopia, “the most recognized donut in the world” is even more breathtaking in real life.

The 32.5-foot-wide donut perched atop a tiny, retro donut shop has been a beacon for L.A.’s donut-lovers since 1953. The original was an instant hit with the neighborhood’s sweet-tooth community, and not much has changed in the decades since.

Visitors can grab one of Randy’s famous homemade donuts by walk-in, drive-through, or online order for in-person pick-up. Local favorites include the glazed raised, nutella raised, and classic cinnamon roll.

Michele Coulon fell in love with baking at an early age, and this love was only deepened when her family moved to Paris in her teens. Her mother, Arlene, attended culinary school there, and taught her daughter all things pastry. When the family returned to San Diego, they opened a restaurant called the Belgian Lion, where Michele was a part-time pastry chef. When her parents retired, she opened up Michele Coulon Dessertier, a shrine to all things French, sweet and locally sourced.

Here you’ll find expertly executed French and American classics: marbled cheesecakes, frangipane tartes, miniature carrot cakes, and endless cookies. Michele also sources many of her ingredients from farms around the San Diego area, combining the locavore spirits of France and California.