The relative ease of snowcone prep makes it ideal for food trucks, and Kona Ice lets the customer pile on the flavors themselves. Track the Kona Ice truck online.

This summertime stop may have a frozen dessert to satisfy any palate, but their off-beat Italian ice flavor list also makes Carmen’s worth the trek to Rockville. Creative options include Birch Beer, Horchata, Chocolate Everything, and Sour Snozberry. The ices can also be paired with Jersey-style frozen custard, which Carmen’s also makes on site.

The national chain helped put the snow cone-custard combination on the map. D.C. locations include Chinatown, Capitol Hill, Verizon Center, and College Park.

Tiki Treats specializes in Hawaiian shave ice, which resembles the state’s iconic “shaved ice” (crushed ice) snow cones but technically uses ice that’s been shaved from a block. Each shave ice comes with three flavors, or customers can request a rainbow option.

It’s not summer in Bethesda without spotting the Clayboys Shaved Ice food cart, often parked on the corner of Woodmont and Bethesda Avenue (near the retail corner formerly housing Barnes and Noble). Shaved ice flavors include a daily special (like egg custard), root beer, and a strawberry-and-coconut combo dubbed Tiger’s Blood. Buried inside each snow cone is a red Swedish Fish — often frozen solid by the time it’s found.

The Korean-inspired bakery integrates Asian and European flavors to produce fanciful desserts called bingsoo — a hybrid of ice cream and shaved ice. Try the fruit bingsoo with vanilla ice cream, mixed fruit, milk, condensed milk, rice cake, and shaved ice or the coffee bingsoo with coffee ice cream, coffee syrup, corn flakes, rice cake, and shaved ice.

Chef Jonathan Taub has his own take on “Wudder Ice” (a spinoff of Philadelphia’s famed “Water Ice”) and offers ices made from scratch with no syrups or corn syrups, in flavors like Bottom of the Fruit Salad, Blood Orange and Saffron, and Lychee. A spiked option exists too, paired with rum or gin.