New: Scoop, an ice cream sandwich shop in Kalihi

From left: s'mores cookie with blueberry cheesecake ice cream, macaron with vanilla, sugar cookie with salted caramel (there was a little flavor mix up).

In a part of Kalihi where all the businesses have bars on the windows, and the takeout Filipino food shop next door serves dinuguan (pork blood stew) and chicharones the size of your face, is Scoop, Honolulu's first ice cream sandwich shop. It's adorable, it's hip. It looks like it'd be better suited for revitalized Kakaako or Kaimuki. But here it is.

The place smells like cookies when you walk in. Make your own ice cream sandwich with 10 different flavors of cookies and seven ice cream flavors (the exact number and flavors change frequently, though none are house made). We paired a s'mores cookie with salted caramel ice cream, sugar cookie with blueberry cheesecake, and a macaron with vanilla ice cream ($2 extra for the macaron).

The extra two dollars turned out to be worth it, the macaron soft, yet slightly crisp, a perfect vehicle and pairing for ice cream. Don't try to eat the others as ice cream sandwiches. Trying to bite through the hard cookies squeezes ice cream out the other side like toothpaste. All the sandwiches are served in styrofoam bowls; perhaps that's the hint to eat them with a spoon, like a sundae, rather than as a sandwich, with your hands.

Those with a serious sweet tooth will love these; the cookie and ice cream combinations can be intensely sugary. But if you need a salty antidote, just head next door.

$3.75/$5.75 (for macaron ice cream sandwich)
Scoop, 1449 N. King St., check Instagram @scoophawaii for hours