Ask anyone about the best ice cream in their neck of the woods, and you’ll get answers rooted in a kind of nostalgia and fierce local loyalty usually reserved for hip hop artists and sports teams. Some regional ice cream brands like Blue Bell, Graeter’s, Tillamook, and Ben & Jerry’s jumped beyond their borders to gain national recognition. But it’s hard to imagine an ice cream shop more all-American than the one that took the top slot in USA Today’s 2026 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards: Omaha, Nebraska’s own Coneflower Creamery.
Named for a native wildflower found only across the Midwestern prairies, Coneflower takes local food seriously. The Creamery sources its rhubarb, berries, lavender, honey, stone fruits, grapes, sweet corn, pears, and even root beer from nearby farms and breweries. The gallons and gallons of fresh milk needed to run a creamery come from Burbach Dairy in Hartington.
Coneflower’s menu includes seasonal flavors like sun-ripened strawberry, tart cherry crumble, garden mint chip, Grandma Minnie’s Lemon Bar, and blueberry elderflower sherbert. A perennial favorite is the Blackstone Butterbrickle, an homage to a chocolate-toffee regional delicacy invented by Omaha’s historic Blackstone Hotel (now The Kimpton Cottonwood Hotel) almost a hundred years ago.
Don’t Sleep on Omaha, Nebraska’s Culinary Scene
That’s not the Blackstone’s only culinary claim to fame. In a addition to butterrickle, this is also the birthplace of the Reuben sandwich, which once fueled hotelier Charles Schimmel’s weekly poker games. It’s true that Omaha rarely gets grouped in with food scene favorites like San Francisco, New Orleans, or Charleston– and it’s more associated with steak than produce or confections. But with neighbors and history like this, it’s easy to see why both the Coneflower co-owners draw such inspiration from The Gateway to the West.
After studying business at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Coneflower founder and “scoopologist” Brian Langbehnmoved to Chicago for culinary school. He studied pastry and worked under the Bon Appetit’s 2005 Pastry Chef of the Year Christine McCabe at Sugar / a Dessert Bar, a buzzy dining concept that blended nightlife and sweets. After a stint on the Amalfi Coast cooking and sampling gelato, Langbehn returned to Omaha, where he joined the team at 801 Chophouse, a fine-dining steakhouse, eventually serving as executive chef…