Ice Cream Jubilee

Ice Cream Jubilee was founded in Washington in 2013 by Victoria Lai, a Georgetown Law graduate who transitioned from law into ice cream making and built the brand from a single Barracks Row location into a DC institution with multiple locations including the Georgetown M Street scoop shop at 3333. The company makes its ice cream in small batches from local dairy and focuses on flavors that the standard commercial ice cream industry does not produce: the Vietnamese Coffee, which combines the sweetened condensed milk and the strong robusta coffee of the Vietnamese cafe tradition into an ice cream that captures the flavor of the drink in a frozen form; the Balsamic Strawberry, which adds the tangy complexity of aged balsamic vinegar to the fruit ice cream format; and the seasonal rotations that follow the DC-area agricultural calendar for fresh fruit ingredients.

The small-batch production model is what enables the flavor creativity that distinguishes Ice Cream Jubilee from the national ice cream chains. A commercial ice cream company producing at scale is constrained in the flavor development it can pursue because the production volume, the supply chain, and the shelf life requirements all limit what is possible. A small-batch producer in a single city can use local ingredients that are only available seasonally, can change flavors frequently without the logistical overhead of a large supply chain, and can experiment with flavor combinations that would never survive a national focus group.

The Georgetown M Street address at 3333 is at the far western end of the main M Street commercial block, near the 34th Street corner. The location serves the Georgetown University population approaching from the campus direction as well as the M Street retail foot traffic and the Georgetown residents who walk from the surrounding blocks.

Vegan options are available at Ice Cream Jubilee, made with coconut milk or oat milk bases. Hours run from noon daily. Victoria Lai’s background as a Georgetown Law graduate who became an ice cream maker is a Georgetown neighborhood story in multiple senses: the law school credential and the entrepreneurial pivot represent a Washington professional trajectory that the Georgetown neighborhood understands, and the ice cream company she built has become part of the neighborhood’s food identity. The M Street location at 3333 serves the Georgetown commercial street with flavors that the Georgetown customer cannot find at the Haagen-Dazs or the Hershey’s at the other end of the block: the specificity of the Vietnamese Coffee, the Balsamic Strawberry, and the seasonal rotations is the reason the Ice Cream Jubilee customer walks past the national chains to reach the Georgetown M Street scoop shop. Ice Cream Jubilee is open daily from noon at the Georgetown M Street address at 3333. Seasonal menus and current flavors are available at icecreamjubilee.com and updated as the DC agricultural calendar brings new local ingredients into the production cycle.