Creaminal ice cream: Thai-inspired ice cream inside Your Choice Restaurant

There is no telling how Santa Barbara’s most inventive ice cream shop has slipped past my radar thus far, but after stumbling into Your Choice Restaurant for a friend’s last-minute birthday celebration, I was shocked to see a mouthwatering list of Asian-inspired ice cream flavors plastered on the entryway wall. What otherwise looks to be a quaint, old-school Thai spot is contrasted by the vibrant, hipster signage and merchandise of Creaminal Ice Cream, a separate ice cream concept operating within the family-owned restaurant. Their menu features unique flavors that take inspiration from various Asian cuisines including ube, thai tea, matcha and coconut with additional mix-ins to level up their pints.

Piti Sukavivatanachai and his wife, Kathy Dao, stumbled upon the idea for Creaminal somewhat accidentally. In 2014, Sukavivatanachai made the difficult decision to temporarily leave behind his career as an EMT in Los Angeles to move back to Santa Barbara and help his parents run their struggling family-owned Thai restaurant, Your Choice. 

After watching his mom prepare the simple coconut-flavored ice cream that adorned their limited dessert menu, Sukavivatanachai and Dao decided to take over the ice cream operation, experimenting with different flavor combinations. After word hit the street about the restaurant’s new killer flavor lineup, their fanbase grew, and the couple started Creaminal as a separate concept operating under the same roof as their family’s restaurant.

Creaminal is now known not only for its delicious scoops and pints, but also for its weekly event, No Sad Sundaes, which features a rotating sundae menu served only on Saturdays after 8 p.m. Offerings have included flavors like the Mango Sticky Rice sundae (mango ice cream, warm coconut sticky rice, salted coconut cream and crispy puffed rice), Peach Oolong Shorty (oolong milk tea ice cream, peach caramel, shortbread crumble and vanilla whipped cream) and the Banana Turon sundae (charred banana and jackfruit ice cream, brown sugar caramel and crispy turon crunch).

Sadly, my friends and I picked the wrong day of the week and were unable to get our hands on their sundaes, but lucky for us, the restaurant also serves Creaminal ice cream and we were able to try three flavors right before closing: Thai Tea Oreo, Kathy’s Dream and Rocky’s Matcha. 

As soon as the bowls arrived at our table, my friends and I were clanking spoons, fighting for bites of the delicious flavors. The Thai Tea Oreo tasted like it was fresh out of your favorite boba shop, with that signature vibrant orange color and hearty chunks of crumbled Oreo. Kathy’s Dream was a delight, with a sweet, nutty base of malted ube ice cream, ribbons of marshmallow fluff and bits of Biscoff cookies mixed throughout. 

I was exceptionally ecstatic about their matcha flavor because if you are a matcha enthusiast like myself, you know Rocky’s Matcha. The craze surrounding this particular matcha brand has taken over the internet, making it exceptionally difficult to get your hands on it to confirm its raving reviews. To my surprise, in addition to Creaminal’s designated ice cream flavors, Your Choice Restaurant also serves matcha lattes using this high-quality, ceremonial-grade matcha. They also sell Rocky’s Matcha and hojicha powders by the can, and offer a Rocky’s Houjicha ice cream flavor, which I hope to return to try.

While I still need to attend one of their No Sad Sundaes events to get the full Creaminal experience, I can definitively say that it is some of the best ice cream I’ve tried in Santa Barbara, and I will definitely be back to try more of what they have to offer.