One scoop or two?
There aren’t many foods that hit the same levels of taste, nostalgia, feel-good factor and accessibility in the way ice cream does. Whether it’s a getting a 99 from an ice cream van after school or enjoying an artisanal scoop of gelato on a European summer holiday, ice cream = good times, a little luxury that’s light on the wallet (the current cost of a Mr Whippy is a topic of debate for another day).
Even if we don’t always have the weather for it, we’ve long been able to get good ice cream in London, from classic vanillas and chocolates to wildly unusual flavours, like Chin Chin’s glazed potato peel soft serve or Anya Hindmarch’s tubs of Twiglets, Bisto Gravy and Garnier’s Pickled Onion ice cream. Happy Endings has been indulging our sweet tooth with epic ice cream sandwiches and swirls of soft serve appear on a host of London menus each summer. You can even pair ice cream with glou-glou wines at The Dreamery in De Beauvoir.
But recently there’s been a new wave of indie and small batch ice cream makers shaking up the scene, with cool aesthetics, unusual flavours and hot pop-ups. These are the ones you need to know…
Marcelo’s Ice Cream
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.
Chunk Provisions
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.
&chill
After starting out as a pop-up in Peckham Arches, Larissa Stange moved &chill to a permanent location in Netil Market. Her “trippy dippy” flavours include umami stout caramel, ube, picante, and masala chai, and she also does killer ice cream sarnies too.
Big Kid
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 Carnaby Street shop or order online.
Tano Gelato
If you’ve not had Argentine gelato before, head down to Tano Gelato in Dalston. 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.
Chilly Vanilli
She’s already nailed cakes and afternoon tea and now baker Lily Vanilli has got into the ice cream game. Her excellently-named Chilly Vanilli concept is doing amaretto, Sicilian lemon and clotted cream scoops at Dalston bar 392 Kingsland Road, which you can also make boozy.
Araw
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.
Charms
Fashion buying to ice cream maker isn’t the most obvious career journey but it’s the one that Calvin Holmes has undertaken. With Charms, he’s creating flavours inspired by his travels, such as milk tea with cinnamon crunch, corn & blackberry ripple, and honey baklava. Holmes hasn’t forgotten fashion though, whipping up custom flavours for the likes of Chopova Lowena and Celine.
Clingy Wrap
If you’ve been down to new 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.
baobae
Lawyer by day, ice cream by night (and also day), Lex Shu Chan is doing it all. With baobae, they’re doing playful flavours, like banana & miso and olive oil & tomato jam, that reflect their experiences growing up as a third culture kid between Hong Kong, Canada and the UK.
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