Ice Cream
This independent ice cream parlour is pleasing punters in Marylebone – including one Harry Styles. The spot specialises in real ice cream and fruit lollies, with flavours including ‘grown-up’ vanilla, chocolate peanut chunk, lychee raspberry and rose, and, of course, watermelon sugar. All the milk and cream is delivered daily from The Estate Dairy, a family-run, B Corp-certified farm, so you know the scoops will be perfectly fresh and creamy.
Duci brings a taste of Sicily to Chiswick. As expected, they have a vast selection of gelato, with Italian staples like pistachio as well as fresh sorbets and vegan options, but it’s not just about cups and cones. The Italian cafe serves up an array of other Sicilan desserts – semifreddi, cannoli, and mega gelato cakes, which layer sponge cake, cream and that sweet Duci gelato.
If you’ve been down to Vietnamese spot Lai Rai in Peckham, you’ll have come across SE London ice cream brand Clingy Wrap, who’s responsible for the Laughing Cow cheese & sweetcorn and fish sauce & caramel scoops on the menu. And that’s just a small taste of what Hilary Yip is making – she’s also selling tubs of Okinawan salted milk, Yakult shiso sherbet, and white chocolate nori ice cream. Available to order for delivery or pick-up from SE.
Missing the food and flavours of her native Philippines during the pandemic, Keziah Manluctao decided to bring them to London through her artisanal ice cream brand Araw. Now she’s stocked in a range of stores and is available on delivery, so you can stock up on tubs of ube halaya, pandan onde onde, Basque cheesecake, roasted banana with tahini fudge, mango sticky rice, and dirty horchata ice cream.
If you’ve not had Argentine gelato before, head down to the new Tano Gelato pop up in Hackney Downs. There Tomas Rizzo is making ice cream with ethically sourced ingredients and Argentine passion. Obvs there’s dulce de leche on the menu but don’t sleep on the banana split, pistachio and gianduja flavours. And grab an alfajor for the road too.
In the garden of E5 Bakehouse, you can find one of the most unique selections of soft-serve flavours in town. Recent flavours include olive oil and lemon, sheep’s ricotta, honey and anise, and fig leaf and vanilla – all perfectly swirled into a waffle cone. Standard scoops are also on offer, and if you’re feeling extra indulgent, try one of their sundaes, which look like they’ve come straight from the pages of a picture book.
Like dipping your Maccies fries in your milkshake? Prefer your ice cream in weird and wacky flavours? Big Kid is the one for you. Harry is the man behind the brand and he’s churning out experimental flavours like McDonald’s fries, wasabi peanut butter, Marmite on toast, olive oil baklava, chocolate cereal milk, and ube blueberry muffin – get them at his Kingly Street shop or order online.
Leyton-based Chunk Provisions describes its gelato as “for the purists and the curious”. That means you can get both classic flavours, your chocolates, your pistachios, your rum raisins, and more unusual scoops, including mushroom brown butter, plum rice pudding and black sesame soy. The Lamington gelato sandwiches look pretty mega too.
Run by chef James and nurse Lindsay, Marcelo’s is a luxury small-batch ice cream biz based in SE London. Their ice cream is churned gelato-style but is made from creamy oat milk, meaning its actually plant-based. The pair do weekly flavour drops – previous tubs have included elderflower kombucha, gooseberry cardamom fool, affogato caramel, and flat peach & oolong – and if you can’t get it on order, you can find them at popping up at different markets, including the Crystal Palace Food Market every Saturday.
Completing the Goodbye Horses trio, made up of the restaurant and wine bar, and coffee shop Day Trip, is ice cream parlour The Dreamery. The space, dominated by a large stainless steel bar, is serving up a seasonally changing menu of ice creams created by Jack Coggins, Head Chef at Goodbye Horses, with flavours like Christmas pudding, gingerbread, mint chocolate chip, croissant, and custard. And if you want a drink to go with your scoops, there’s a selection of light glou-glou wines from small and indie producers on offer too.
Mamasons, the Filipino ‘dirty’ ice cream specialists (that’s the ice cream made in a steel drum with salt and ice), are serving up some seriously instagrammable scoops in Chinatown (they also have a shop in Kentish Town and a kiosk at Westfield in Shepherd’s Bush). You can get flavours like black coconut, ube (purple yam) and calamansi as well as bilog (a milk bun ice cream sandwich), ube iced lattes and halo halo, made with shaved ice, evaporated milk, coconut strings, jellies, leche flan & ube ice cream. SWEET.
Minus 12 degrees (named after the ideal serving temperature for gelato) is the small-batch ice cream shop slinging homemade, Italian-style gelato and sorbet to the people of South London. You can expect weekly changing flavours including the likes of malted dulce de leche; chocolate smoked salt; caramel gelato with whipped Nutella and banana bread; and ricotta gelato with crushed cannoli shells, toasted pistachios and pistachio cream. There’s plenty of vegan ones here too.
This dessert bar with branches in Balham and Brixton serves up fresh ice cream made with organic milk in flavours like caramel popcorn, vanilla honeycomb, and cold-pressed coffee. If you don’t want just one scoop, you can also get stacked sundaes, milkshakes, waffles, crepes and more.
This is an absolute hidden gem in Stoke Newington. The ice cream here is some of the best in London but it’s kind of an unknown spot unless you live in the area (which luckily we do!). When the weather’s nice there’s usually a queue down the street for this authentic Italian gelato, with flavours including ricotta and fig; salted caramel; supreme pistachio; and extra dark chocolate sorbet.
You can’t get more traditional than Venchi who have 140 years of gelato-making experience under their belts. They have ten stores across London, but with a gelato lab and a running chocolate tap, their Covent Garden shop is the one to head to.
For those wanting a fancy ice cream experience, you probably can’t do any better than The Parlour at Fortnum & Mason. The Parlour offers a range of decadent ice creams based on retro British faves like the knickerbocker glory and the banana split. And for those who want to push the boat out even further, there’s even the ‘Afternoon Tea in Ice Cream Form,’ which is exactly what it says on the tin.
If meal deal sandwiches are not for you, Happy Endings offer the perfect alternative. Yup you guessed it, we’re talking about ice cream sandwiches, like malted milk parfait in an oat biscuit and salted caramel & miso parfait between chocolate Guinness cake. You can order direct from Happy Endings, either for delivery or click & collect from its Mile End kitchen, or you can find them all over town at the likes of Yard Sale, Tonkotsu, Patty & Bun, Pavilion, Jones of Brockley and Burger & Beyond.
La Gelatiera makes traditional artisan gelato according to their ‘Slow Food’ philosophy, so all their gelato is egg and gluten free, and lower in fat than most ice creams you’d find in the supermarket. So you can eat more of it, right? Their East Village store even has its own gelato-making lab so you can watch a fresh batch of ice cream being made whilst you scoff yours down.
