Entry No. 60 — the Portland file — filed under: soft-serve
Sugarpine Drive-In
The building went up in the 1920s as a gas station on the Historic Columbia River Highway, serving the first generation of Gorge road-trippers, and spent the decades since as a fish-and-tackle shop and then a riverside concession stand before the current owners took it over in 2018. You order at a walk-up window and eat outside, on picnic tables or on the bank itself, at the point in Glenn Otto Park where the Sandy River delivers a steady supply of sunburned inner-tube floaters coming ashore. The sundaes are the reason to make the drive — tall, engineered soft-serve constructions swirled with house sauces and broken pastry, which Eater has described as built for the Instagram generation and which once moved a thousand units in a single Mother's Day. The savory half of the menu is smoked-meat sandwiches and vegetable bowls sourced from West Gorge and Willamette Valley farms, and it changes with the season; the current board is the Summer 2026 menu. The whole thing shuts at 5 p.m., which is the one detail people get wrong.
→ Three more weird eats & drinks in Portland — never the same twice
The story
The building went up in the 1920s as a gas station on the Historic Columbia River Highway, back when driving the Gorge was the attraction. It sold fish and tackle for a stretch, then ran as a riverside concession stand, and in 2018 Emily Cafazzo and Ryan Domingo restored it and opened Sugarpine — funded in part by a Kickstarter that launched that June, with the ribbon cut on July 12. Cafazzo is the executive pastry chef, an alum of Beast in Portland and Roberta's in Brooklyn; Domingo, a Bay Area native, runs the creative side and draws on the Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese and Tex-Mex cooking he grew up around.
What's there is a walk-up window, a drive-thru lane, and the whole of Glenn Otto Park: picnic tables and the Sandy River delivering sunburned inner-tube floaters onto the bank all afternoon. The menu is rewritten every season — the current board is Summer 2026, titled "Tropical Vacay" — and the sundaes are the engineering exercise. The Larch Mountain is $9 of vanilla-chocolate swirl with brown butter blondie bites, blueberry-lavender sauce and pine nut honeycomb crunch; the "Mauna Loa" volcano sundae is $10. Build-your-own runs a 5-ounce kid size or a 10-ounce regular, original or plant-based, with sauces and magic shells priced per addition.
The savory half is smoked meat and produce from small West Gorge and Willamette Valley farms, plus hook-and-line fish from Oregon and Washington: Cuban pulled pork at $18, a "Waffle" grilled cheese pressed in a waffle iron at $11.50, a plant-based Three Sisters sandwich, a spicy salmon poke bowl. Drinks lean local, including a Sugarpine "Etxeko" cider made with Son of Man. The Oregonian clocked a thousand sundaes sold on a single Mother's Day in 2020, and the New York Times put it on its Best Dishes in America list for 2024.
What it's like
You park in the Glenn Otto Park lot, walk up to the window, order off a board that changed with the season, then find your own picnic table or a patch of riverbank. All the seating is outdoors and most of it is unshaded, so weather is the plan rather than a detail. On a hot weekend the lot fills, the line runs long, and a good share of the people in it are dripping from the river; there's a drive-thru lane and online ordering at ordersugarpine.com if you'd rather skip the standing. Sundaes are built to order, so they take a minute, and they're worth eating immediately rather than photographing at length. The window closes at 5 p.m., which is the detail people get wrong — there's no dinner service, and it's a 20-to-25-minute drive back into Portland.
The move: Leave town by 3, get to the window before the 5 p.m. cutoff, and split a sandwich plus one full-size sundae at a picnic table with your feet in the Sandy while the last tubers of the day drag themselves out of the water. If you have the whole afternoon, do the classic version instead: put in upstream and float the three miles down to Glenn Otto so the sundae is the finish line rather than the errand.
📍 Before you go Open Wednesday through Monday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m., closed every Tuesday — hours are seasonal and shrink in the off-season, so check before a winter drive. Phone (503) 665-6558. It's about 20–25 minutes east of Portland on I-84; parking is the Glenn Otto Park lot, which fills on hot weekends. Ordering is at a walk-up window plus a limited online/QR option; seating is all outdoors and unshaded picnic tables, so rain is a real factor. No dinner service — this is an afternoon plan, not an evening one.
- 📍 Troutdale
- 💸 $
- ⚡ Up for anything
- 🌗 Indoors
Where: 1208 E Historic Columbia River Hwy, Troutdale, OR 97060
Hours: Added 2026-08-26 — confirm current hours before you go.
⚠ Seasonal or scheduled — always check before you go.
Pair it with
- Joseph Wood Hill Park at Rocky Butte — Right off I-84 on the way out or the way back — a 613-foot cinder cone with a WPA stone overlook on top, and the obvious place to go once the window shuts at five.
- Botanica Brillante — Out at SE 181st on the eastern edge of the same drive: a Santa Muerte-heavy botanica stocked for practitioners, and nothing at all like a soft-serve window in daylight.
- Bipartisan Cafe — Sugarpine closes at five and Bipartisan runs until six, and it's barely off the I-205 exit on the drive home — sundae, then pie, which is a defensible use of an afternoon.
More weird in Portland
Good to know
How do we get there, and where do we park?
1208 E Historic Columbia River Hwy in Troutdale, about 20 to 25 minutes east of Portland on I-84. Parking is the Glenn Otto Park lot the drive-in sits inside, which fills on hot weekends — arriving before noon or after about 3 p.m. is the difference between a spot and a circuit of the lot.
What are the hours, really?
The Summer 2026 board says Wednesday through Monday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Tuesdays. Hours are seasonal and contract in the off-season, so check before a winter drive rather than trusting a stale listing. Phone is 503-665-6558. There is no evening service at any time of year.
Do we tip?
No — a 20% service charge is added to every transaction in lieu of gratuity and distributed among the hourly staff. The menu states this outright. Budget accordingly: two sandwiches and a sundae lands north of $50 once the charge is on.
Is there anything for vegans or people avoiding gluten?
Yes, and it's built into the menu rather than improvised. Plant-based soft serve comes in coconut-vanilla, blueberry-ube sorbet and a plant-based swirl, with plant-based toppings marked on the board; the "Once in a Blue Moon" sundae is entirely plant-based, as are the Three Sisters sandwich, the Sugarpine salad and the nori potato salad. Any sandwich can be made a salad or rice bowl for $1 more if you're avoiding gluten.
What happens if it rains?
You get wet. Every seat is outside — unshaded picnic tables and the riverbank — with no indoor dining room to retreat into. On a bad-weather day the drive-thru lane and online pre-order exist so you can collect a sundae and eat it in the car, which is arguably the more historically faithful version of a drive-in anyway.
Plan a visit & invite your people →
Further reading: Official site · pdx.eater.com · Wikipedia
last checked: 2026-08-26