Whether you’re a traditionalist who loves the classic scoop or the slightly new-school, soft serve obsessive, London’s ice cream scene has something for everyone.
From familiar favourites to more esoteric takes, from cup to cone, here’s our top ten places worth a lick.
Ace pizza
While the relatively recent uptick in pizza has been largely responsible for London loosening its belt by a few notches, some offer more than tiramisu for dessert. Ace Pizza, specifically the Victoria Park joint, boasts slaloms of soft serve, such as fior di latte, layered with quality honey and grassy olive oil, flaky salt and finished with pollen. Rumour has it that if you’re good, you can opt for hot honey instead.
126-128 Lauriston Road, E9 7LH, thisisacepizza.com
The Dreamery
Jack Coggins, head chef at Goodbye Horses, has breathed new life into the small plates game and is proving to be a dab hand with ice cream to boot. At the restaurants sister space The Dreamery are scoops that threaten to outcompete the flavour profiles of the natural wine offered alongside. Expect fig leaf, oolong and prune, croissant, and classic mint chocolate chip.
20a Halliford Street, N1 3HD, dreamery.london
Chin Chin
Among the hustle and bustle of Soho, Chin Chin provides a selection of excellent reasons to navigate the throngs that reward the curious. One is chestnut mushroom soft serve which comes dusted with dehydrated dragon fruit and finished with a button mushroom glaze. Another is hazelnut spliced with crispy corn kernels, sliding atop a creme caramel. See also the “Green Grass” flavour that’s bursting with the chlorophyll of meadow herbs and is spliced with hyssop and lavender. For those of you who dip fried into your shake and abide by zero-waste, they’ve been known to do a potato soft serve with stick chips, shimmering with a potato peel glaze. A Covent Garden site will be opening in September at Seven Dials Market.
Soho store on 54 Greek Street, W1D 3DS, chinchinicecream.com
Bilmonte
Handmade daily to a traditional Sicilian recipe, Bilmonte offers a tight gelato selection, reflective of its focus on quality above all. Famed for their extra dark salted chocolate, which you can lick to a mirror-like sheen, Bilmonte is also known for being “extra”, lacing its already beloved pistachio with pistachio creme. It also offers the option to crown your cone with a little cone filled to the brim with melted milk chocolate. Gianduja, coffee, white chocolate and hazelnut are typically on the roster, bringing eminently complementary combinations.
30 Great Windmill Street,W1D 7LW, bilmonte.it
Happy Endings
You’ll have likely seen the creations of award-winning pastry chef Terri Mercieca of Happy Endings bringing up the rear of dessert options to various kitchen residencies, speaking volumes to the confidence placed by others in her work. The beauty with Mercieca’s creations is that they’re available for delivery, saving a schlep and perfectly suited to soft afternoons at home. Offering milk, tres leches, chocolate, coffee and malt soft serve as standard, Mercieca is also open to requests for custom flavours.
Unit 3, Crescent Court Business Centre, North Crescent,E16 4TG, happyendingsldn.com
Bake Street
Known as somewhat of a culinary polymath, Bake Street doesn’t just bring quality birria tacos, smash burgers, Nashville hot chicken sandwiches and crème brûlée cookies to London, but exquisitely silky spires of soft serve too. Previous contenders have utterly mainlined millennial nostalgia with Horlick’s and chocolate swirled with butterscotch delight to guava and blueberry or pain au chocolate and mandarin, the latter garnished with a wisp of caramelised pain au choc.
58 Evering Rd, Lower Clapton, N16 7SR, bakestreet.co.uk
Sundae
You might think that being the only gelateria in the area might cause it to relax a little, but Brockley’s Sundae Gelato makes a point of changing up its flavours of quality gelato whenever it can. From subtle cornflake and milk as a viable breakfast to the nostalgia of banoffee pie, a beautifully bittersweet Guinness to cinnamon bun, Sundae Gelato is a must-try.
309 Brockley Road, SE4 2QZ, @sundaegelato
Soft & Swirly
Currently at E5 Bakehouse, Soft & Swirly have made ripples around London with their thoughtfully inventive flavour combinations of soft serve, appearing almost AI-like in their vividness. A recent flavour combo saw one of lemon, honey and cardamom, while previous creations include apple and lemon basil, fragola grape, plum and vanilla, and sundaes such as hojicha (roasted green tea) and cherry.
Arch 4, Voyager Estate, Spa Road, SE16 4RP, @soft_n_swirly
Gelupo
Gelupo is a stalwart of London’s gelato scene, mostly down to its reputation for churning out hit after hit, from the familiar to the slightly more adventurous. Expect burnt caramel and pecan, a play on mint choc-chip via mint and stracciatella or peanut butter ice cream laced with more peanut butter on top. Consider also the honeycomb, the ricotta, inventive options like chocolate and pepper and Easter specials such as hot cross bun flavour.
7 Archer Street, W1D 7AU, gelupo.com
Forza Wine
Whether it’s the towering Peckham site or the more recent one at The National Theatre, Forza Wine has cultivated a reputation not just for its rafts of small plates, wines and considered cocktails, but its ever-changing soft serve, always with a distinct, irreverent originality at its core. Dispensed into small but sturdy espresso glasses, you can expect to see the likes of popcorn, burnt vanilla with hazelnuts, to a riff on a classic crumble using mascarpone and stone fruit.
The Rooftop, 133A Rye Ln, London SE15 4BQ, National Theatre, London SE1 9PX, forzawine.com
