This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to our very opinionated editors’ favorite things to eat, drink, and buy.

I was skeptical when my friend Khushbu first told me about Frankie & Jo’s, a mini ice cream shop chain in Seattle. “Vegan ice cream but not terrible,” her text said. Vegan ice cream is usually an immediate pass for me. It’s chunky, icy, and dense. But after giving it a try this past summer, I’d go so far as to say that Frankie and Jo’s not only wasn’t terrible—this ice cream changed me!

The Capitol Hill shop is small, with minimal décor. That’s okay. You’re here for the frozen stuff. The base incorporates cashews and coconut milk, making the ice cream exceedingly creamy. You can run your spoon right through it, with not an ice granule to be found. There are all sorts of interesting flavors too—brown sugar vanilla, chocolate tahini—but the one you must try is salty caramel ash, a mildly sweet, jet black scoop flavored with burnt vegan caramel, coconut oil, vanilla extract, and sea salt. If you’ve ever had salted caramel flavored anything, this is nothing like that. It’s better. More subtle. You can taste the inherent richness of the base, the intensity of the vanilla, and the slight smokiness of the caramel. And we haven’t even talked about the waffle cone! Made with maple syrup, oat flour, and flax seeds, it is crunchy with just the right amount of bendiness and chew. You’ll want to eat it like a cookie.

I visited at least a half dozen ice cream shops during that short trip to Seattle (you’ve got to respect a city where it is cold most of the year, yet there is an ice cream shop on every block). All of them dairy-based, mind you. And yet, after all that, it’s the vegan option that I can’t stop thinking about. Life sure is wild sometimes.