The Best Fast Food Ice Cream, Ranked

In my neck of the woods, 'tis the season for soft serve ice cream. In Vermont, soft serve is called a "creemee," and creemee stands start opening mid-May. It's a much celebrated time of year, but it's also short-lived, lasting from May to September. What keeps us going in-between? For me, it's fast-food soft serve.

I've long been a fan of McDonald's soft serve. Recently though, I started thinking about the ice cream itself, wondering if I'm missing out on something greater. Of the many fast food restaurants that offer ice cream in a cup or a cone, which one has the best basic vanilla soft serve?

To find out, I compared four popular options: McDonald's, Burger King, Sonic, and Dairy Queen. One was a clear winner, and it wasn't at all the one I expected.

I'm sorry to say that Dairy Queen is not the queen of my heart. In the notes I scribbled down while eating, I wrote, "Soft in a bouncy way—has a marshmallow quality." It was like a cloud that wasn't quite cold enough. Furthermore, it have the creaminess or the strong vanilla flavor I had hoped.

Perhaps if I'd thrown some toppings on it, this soft serve would have made for a good sundae base. But I'm here to judge this ice cream on its own merits, and as such, Dairy Queen was not the winner by a long shot.

This one tasted pretty dialed-down. One thing I found interesting, when comparing soft serve vanilla ice cream experiences, was the point at which the vanilla flavor hit my palate within a particular bite—like a wine tasting, but much less classy. At Burger King, the vanilla soft serve tasted like milk first, and then vanilla. That milk-forward flavor was at least surprising, especially when compared to more vanilla-forward ice creams, but it wasn't an altogether welcome one.

McDonald's, my tried and true, has a pretty assertive vanilla flavor. And, as usual, the mixture was very cold and quite creamy. Before I took a more serious look at this broader fast food dessert category, I would have told you that McDonald's ice cream isn't as creamy as others, but I would have been wrong. Mercifully, it stayed firm enough to hold its shape during a car ride, still retaining optimal texture once I got home with it. McDonald's vanilla soft serve is a stalwart. Just not the champion of the group.

As I've documented in the past, I didn't grow up eating Sonic, and although I know it has an expansive menu, its ice cream wasn't on my radar. As it turns out, Sonic takes the cake: of all the ice creams sampled for this ranking, Sonic's was far and away the best. It had an off-white color that the rest didn't, one that reminded me of homemade vanilla ice cream, which I have made and which is, before frozen, reminiscent of egg nog.

(You might be wondering why the photo looks a little melty. In fact, that's a testament to the quality of the ice cream: Its tastiness was so distracting that we happily ate our servings before remembering to photograph the portion we'd set aside as the model.)

Its flavor was supremely vanilla-forward, and as such, it was the only serving of fast food ice cream I felt compelled to finish. It's also the only one I failed to take a representative picture of. I'll probably seek out a second serving of Sonic soft serve soon. Maybe even before the creemee stands close for the season.