Why ice cream deserves the same seriousness as a suit
Nobody needs ice cream. That is the point of it. It is the one thing on this site that exists purely because it makes people happy, and I have watched grown men in three-piece suits queue for forty minutes in Buenos Aires without a word of complaint. The best parlors understand that they are selling a small, complete pleasure, and they treat the job with the seriousness of a tailor.
What I look for is simple. Made on the premises, from real ingredients, in small batches, by people who would be embarrassed to serve you something they had not tasted that morning. Beyond that, the fifteen below have almost nothing in common. Some are a century old. One opened in a strip mall in 1980. One is a chain, and I have included it anyway because the man who started it changed how an entire continent thinks about ice cream.
A great ice cream parlor makes you feel nine years old and forgive yourself for it.
I have grouped them by region rather than ranked them, because ranking a Roman gelateria against a St. Louis custard stand is a fool’s errand. Every one has a link, and the ones that ship will ship.
Europe
1. Berthillon, Paris
31 rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île · berthillon.fr
The most famous ice cream in France, made by the same family on the Île Saint-Louis since 1954, and sold in scoops so small that first-time visitors assume there has been a mistake. There has not. Berthillon is about intensity, not volume, and a single scoop of the wild strawberry sorbet says more than a pint of anything else.
The salon de thé on the corner is the proper way to do it, with a coupe and a coffee, and the queue at the takeaway window is part of Parisian life. Closed on the hottest weeks of summer, which is either maddening or admirable depending on your mood. Order the caramel au beurre salé and the pear sorbet together.
2. Giolitti, Rome
Via degli Uffici del Vicario 40 · giolitti.it
Founded in 1900 and a few steps from the Pantheon, Giolitti is the gelateria where Rome goes after dinner. The room is belle époque and unchanged, the counter is chaos, and the system is the Roman one: pay first, take your receipt to the counter, and shout your flavours over everyone else’s.
The gelato is classic rather than inventive, which is the point. Crema, pistachio, and the marron glacé when it is in season, with a cap of panna if you know what is good for you. Sit in the back room in a linen jacket with a coppa and you will understand why the city has never needed anywhere else.
3. Vivoli, Florence
Via dell’Isola delle Stinche 7r · vivoli.it
Serafino Vivoli opened a dairy in the Santa Croce quarter in 1929 and his brother started making gelato in 1932. Four generations later it is still the same family in the same shop, and there are still no cones, only cups. The gelato is denser and richer than the Roman style, and the affogato, which Vivoli almost single-handedly brought back into fashion, is the best in Italy.
It is hidden in the lanes west of Santa Croce and it is always crowded. Go late, after ten, when the Florentines come in and the tour groups have gone to bed.
4. Gelateria Dondoli, San Gimignano
Piazza della Cisterna 4 · gelateriadondoli.com
Sergio Dondoli has won the Ice Cream World Championship twice and holds the title Master of Art and Craft, and his shop on the main square of a Tuscan hill town is the one gelateria on this list that people fly to Italy specifically to visit. The flavours are the reason. Saffron with pine nuts. Crema di Santa Fina, made with the town’s own saffron. A basil, tomato and strawberry sorbet he calls Italian Garden, which sounds like a mistake and is a revelation.
The line stretches across the piazza on summer afternoons. It moves quickly, and you eat standing against a medieval tower, which is not a bad way to eat anything.
5. Gelupo, London
7 Archer Street, Soho · gelupo.com
Jacob Kenedy opened Gelupo across the street from his restaurant Bocca di Lupo in 2010, and it remains the best gelato in Britain by a distance. The flavours change with the seasons and with the chef’s mood: blood orange in winter, fresh mint stracciatella, ricotta and sour cherry, a bonet that tastes like a Piedmontese grandmother made it.
It is a small tiled room in the heart of Soho, open late, and it is where I go after the theatre. The sorbets are made with so much fruit that they are practically a health food, which is the lie I tell myself in the queue.
The Middle East and Latin America
6. Bachir, Beirut
Founded in Bikfaya in 1936, with branches across Beirut and now Dubai and Doha · bachir.com
Lebanese ice cream is a different animal. Booza is made with mastic and sahlab, pounded rather than churned, and the result is dense, chewy and stretchy in a way that startles anyone raised on Italian gelato. Bachir has been making it since 1936, four generations on, and its ashta, a milk-cream ice scented with rose and orange blossom and rolled in crushed pistachio, is one of the great desserts of the world.
The Achrafieh branch is the big one. Order the ashta in a cone, let them roll it in pistachio, and eat it on the street the way everyone else does. The brand has since opened in Dubai, Sharjah and Qatar, and it travels well.
7. Cadore, Buenos Aires
Avenida Corrientes 1695 · heladeriacadore.com.ar
The Olivotti family began making gelato in the Dolomite village of Cadore in 1881, emigrated to Argentina, and opened this narrow shop on Corrientes in 1957. It has never moved and it has never opened a second location, on the principle that real artisan ice cream is made where it is sold. The city declared it a site of cultural interest in 2018, and National Geographic put it among the ten best in the world.
You are here for the dulce de leche, which is the finest expression of Argentina’s national flavour anywhere, and for the dark chocolate. The queue on the pavement runs past midnight in summer, in the theatre district, surrounded by people who have just left a show. It is one of the happiest places I know.
North America
8. Bassetts, Philadelphia
Reading Terminal Market, 12th and Arch · bassettsicecream.com
The oldest ice cream company in America, founded in 1861 by a Quaker schoolteacher who churned his first batch with a mule, and still run by his descendants from the marble counter it has occupied in Reading Terminal Market since the market opened in 1893. This is my home team, and I would put it here even if it were not.
Bassetts is old-fashioned American ice cream at its best: high butterfat, no gimmicks, and flavours that have not changed because they did not need to. The French vanilla is the benchmark, the butterscotch vanilla is the insider’s order, and a scoop after a cheesesteak is the correct Philadelphia sequence.
9. Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream, New York
88 West Houston Street · morgensternsnyc.com
Nicholas Morgenstern is the most talented ice cream maker in America, and his shop on Houston Street is a white-tiled laboratory with a soda fountain attached. The menu runs to dozens of flavours at any moment, from a durian banana that divides rooms to a burnt honey vanilla that unites them, and the texture, made in small batches with minimal air, is unlike anything the big brands can produce.
The King Kong banana split is the showpiece. The Vietnamese coffee scoop is the daily order. Sit at the counter, in a jacket, and do not let anyone tell you it is a place for children.
10. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, Columbus
North Market, 59 Spruce Street, and shops nationwide · jenis.com
Jeni Britton started selling ice cream at a stall in Columbus’s North Market in 2002, and the company she built has done more than any other to make Americans expect real ingredients from a scoop shop. The flavours are the ones everyone now copies: Brambleberry Crisp, Brown Butter Almond Brittle, Salty Caramel, and a Darkest Chocolate that is as close to a bar of Valrhona as ice cream gets.
There are shops across the country and they are all good, but the North Market original is where it started, and the market itself is worth the trip.
11. Salt & Straw, Portland
838 NW 23rd Avenue, and shops along the West Coast · saltandstraw.com
Cousins Kim and Tyler Malek opened a cart in Portland in 2011 with the idea that an ice cream parlor could be as local and as seasonal as a farm-to-table restaurant. They were right. The flavours are built around Oregon producers, olive oil from one, honey from another, and the monthly rotating menus have included everything from bone marrow with bourbon cherries to a Thanksgiving turkey stuffing that people still argue about.
The Honey Lavender is the flavour that made them, and the Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons is the one to order if you only have one. Expect a line. It is part of the deal.
12. Bi-Rite Creamery, San Francisco
3692 18th Street, the Mission · biritemarket.com
The creamery attached to the best small grocery store in America, a block from Dolores Park, and the shop that made salted caramel a household flavour in this country. The ice cream is organic, made a few feet from where it is sold, and the balsamic strawberry in early summer is the best argument I know for living in Northern California.
Order at the window, walk to the park, and sit on the grass with the rest of the city. On a clear Saturday it is one of the great civic rituals in America.
13. Mashti Malone’s, Los Angeles
1525 North La Brea Avenue, Hollywood · mashtimalones.com
In 1980 Mashti Shirvani, an immigrant from Mashhad, bought a shuttered parlor called Mugsy Malone’s in a Hollywood strip mall. He could not afford to replace the whole sign, so he replaced half of it, and Mashti Malone’s was born. Four decades on, it is the finest Persian ice cream outside Iran and the most quietly beloved parlor in Los Angeles.
Order the saffron rosewater with pistachio, the flavour his family has been making for generations, and the faloodeh, a sorbet threaded with rice noodles and served with sour cherry. Then order the Malone, ice cream pressed between two honey rosewater wafers, which is what every Persian child in the city grew up on.
14. Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, St. Louis
6726 Chippewa Street, on old Route 66 · teddrewes.com
Frozen custard is ice cream with egg yolks and less air, served fresh from the machine, and Ted Drewes has been making it since 1929 from a stand on old Route 66 that looks exactly as it did in 1950. On a summer evening the crowd on the sidewalk runs into the hundreds and the parking lot has its own choreography.
The order is a Concrete, custard blended with mix-ins so thick they hand it to you upside down to prove it will not fall out. The Cardinal Sin, with tart cherries and hot fudge, is the local choice. It is the most American place on this list and I mean that as the highest compliment.
Australia
15. Gelato Messina, Sydney
389 Crown Street, Surry Hills, and shops across Australia · gelatomessina.com
Nick Palumbo opened the first Messina in Darlinghurst in 2002, and the company now makes almost everything itself, from the milk on its own dairy farm to the hazelnuts it roasts and the chocolate it tempers. That level of control shows. The pistachio is the best outside Sicily, the Salted Caramel and White Chocolate is the national flavour of Australia in all but name, and the weekly special flavours, announced on social media and gone in days, have made queuing outside a Messina a Sydney pastime.
The Surry Hills shop is the one to visit, and the gelato cakes, elaborate to the point of absurdity, are the correct gift to bring to any Sydney dinner party.
How to eat ice cream like an adult
Two flavours, never three. A cup with two scoops is a considered decision. Three is a child with a coupon. Choose one cream and one fruit, or one chocolate and one nut, and let them talk to each other.
Ask what was made this morning. At any of the places above, the answer is everything, and the person behind the counter will be pleased you asked. At most other places the question will tell you what you need to know.
Eat it standing up, outside, in a good jacket. Ice cream is a street food with a pedigree. Take it out of the shop, find a wall or a piazza or a park, and give it your full attention. It does not take long.
And never order what you had last time. That is the whole pleasure of a great parlor. They made something new this morning, and you are here.
The best things in life are not always the most expensive. Sometimes they cost six dollars and come in a cup.
Whatever Suits You · Style. Sound. Substance.
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