The best of cold, sweet treats

It’s a chocolate and vanilla showdown. We visited four popular…

It’s a chocolate and vanilla showdown. We visited four popular Pittsburgh ice cream shops and got two simple scoops at each. No toppings, no cones, no nonsense.

Oh Yeah!

Texture: Scooped ice cream, blended by a foot-long corkscrew producing a firm, but soft frozen desert. The texture is the high point of this shop’s dense treat. Highly creamy and heavy, this ice cream explores the third realm between soft serve and scoop.

Taste: The chocolate and vanilla are straightforward and simple, but that matches well with the bold texture. And with more than 100 mix-ins, the balanced taste serves as a capable platform for any extreme mix you can think of, even goat cheese and strawberries.

Hipster factor: Oh Yeah! is only matched in hipness by its patrons. Carved oak paneling, myriad highway signs mixed with local painters, magazine racks, wall-length bookshelves and plenty of space to enjoy your amorphous treats.

Milk Shake Factory

Texture: Definitely not soft serve; desert from the Milk Shake Factory is only scooped out from the tub with difficulty. Surprisingly, the ice cream’s firmness does not translate to denseness, and the treat has an airy, almost whipped style.

Taste: Not for the weak hearted, the Milk Shake Factory clearly had the boldest taste of all the sampled shops. The chocolate is dark and nutty, a coco flavor that is not too sweet. The vanilla is powerful as well, a deep flavor that hangs around the mouth.

Hipster factor: A sleek, open, modern feel that meshes well with the South Side Scene. Mirrors, glass, hardwood floors and a blood-red Victorian ceiling with hanging chandeliers set the scene for some serious ice cream enjoment.

Klavon’s

Texture: Not quite as centrist as Oh Yeah!, Klavon’s also toes the line between soft serve and scoop ice cream. Traditional is the key word here, a fulfilling — and filling — balance between ice and cream.

Taste: Traditional does not always mean restrained, and Klavon’s proves that maxim. By sticking to the basic flavors, with only a few flares, these chocolate and vanilla flavors are true to ice cream traditions. The vanilla is sweet but also full, and the chocolate is dark, approaching bitter.

Hipster factor: The ice cream is not the only thing traditional about Klavon’s. The shop stands in what used to be a pharmacy, and the store brings patrons back to the days where ice cream shops, soda fountains and pharmacies were all one. If you want your desert with a dose of nostalgia, Klavon’s is the place to get it.

Dave and Andy’s

Texture: A dense, creamy scooped style; Dave and Andy’s serves malt ice cream, which has very little air whipped in and feels heavier than other versions of the frozen treat. Good luck eating with the flimsy plastic spoon in which its served.

Taste: Not as strong or subtle as the other shops, Dave and Andy’s holds the middle ground between sweet and complex. The vanilla tastes more sugary than nutty, but the chocolate has a deep coco flavor, more complex than the vanilla but still straightforward.

Hipster factor: Dave and Andy’s wins the easiest-to-get-to award for its location of Atwood Street. The shop is chilly inside, colder than the others with and old-timey feel almost equal to Klavon’s. Oak paneling and yellow walls and framed newspaper accolades give you something to stare at as you slip into ice cream heaven.