Best ice cream

It's a testament to the quality of its ice cream that JP Licks' décor -- with its recurrent swollen-udder motif -- doesn't send you squeamishly right back out the door. The flagship Jamaica Plain location has been in business for more than 20 years, rolling out the goods for the handful of stores that have opened since -- not only ice cream but hard-packed and soft-serve frozen yogurt, sorbet, and sherbet, in flavors that pique your interest without confounding it: candied ginger, oatmeal cookie, and white coffee, to name a few. Brownies and waffles à la mode are the latest addition to the menu (fine, just so long as no one gets any cute ideas about cow pies).

The well-worn interior at Christina's Homemade Ice Cream won't move you one way or the other, but its ice cream most certainly will. The long-lived Inman Square storefront continues to surprise even the most jaded connoisseurs with its capacity for churning out (literally) flavors that, though new, aren't merely novelties, but genuine sensations. Recently, there was sweet corn. Currently, there's Wild Turkey walnut; cardamom-and-pistachio-laced khulfi; fresh mint, made with the actual leaves; and Concord-grape sorbet fresh from the pulp, not from concentrate. As for tomorrow, who knows?

JP Licks, various locations. Christina's Homemade Ice Cream, 1255 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, (617) 492-7021.