The second half of my round-up of my favourite places for great ice-cream. Quick, while the weather's still nice!
I've updated this after a weekend of October sunshine and more ice-cream eating opportunities.
Nardulli
29 The Pavement
Clapham Common
SW4 0JE
Should I admit that I went to this place twice in one day? Well, it was an astonishingly hot October day - that's my justification anyway.
There are so many flavours at Nardulli that it's hard to choose, including some unusual varieties. Using all my willpower I managed to bypass my usual favourites of hazelnut and strawberry in favour of something different. So I tried the cardamom, whose elegant, slightly sweet flavour goes remarkably well with ice-cream. It's fairly subtle, not overpowering as I had feared. I can also recommend cinnamon, which reminded me of a warm oven full of biscuits and cake mixture - unexpected associations in an ice-cream, but downright delicious. The fig flavour, like the black cherry, is a swirl of fruitiness mixed with vanilla ice-cream. The black cherry variety contains pieces of fruit, while the fig is a reduced, sticky (almost syrupy) burst of fruit against the creamy background.
Other flavours include macadamia (nice, but I think I'll be sticking with hazelnut in future) passionfruit (bright yellow, beautifully intense), caramel, bacio (hazelnut and chocolate), Nutella (not sure how this differs from the last one), tiramisu, lemon, coconut, amaretto, pistachio, fior di latte, chocolate orange...
Expect queues on sunny weekends.
Lab G
I've updated this after a weekend of October sunshine and more ice-cream eating opportunities.
Nardulli
29 The Pavement
Clapham Common
SW4 0JE
Should I admit that I went to this place twice in one day? Well, it was an astonishingly hot October day - that's my justification anyway.
There are so many flavours at Nardulli that it's hard to choose, including some unusual varieties. Using all my willpower I managed to bypass my usual favourites of hazelnut and strawberry in favour of something different. So I tried the cardamom, whose elegant, slightly sweet flavour goes remarkably well with ice-cream. It's fairly subtle, not overpowering as I had feared. I can also recommend cinnamon, which reminded me of a warm oven full of biscuits and cake mixture - unexpected associations in an ice-cream, but downright delicious. The fig flavour, like the black cherry, is a swirl of fruitiness mixed with vanilla ice-cream. The black cherry variety contains pieces of fruit, while the fig is a reduced, sticky (almost syrupy) burst of fruit against the creamy background.
Other flavours include macadamia (nice, but I think I'll be sticking with hazelnut in future) passionfruit (bright yellow, beautifully intense), caramel, bacio (hazelnut and chocolate), Nutella (not sure how this differs from the last one), tiramisu, lemon, coconut, amaretto, pistachio, fior di latte, chocolate orange...
Expect queues on sunny weekends.
 |
| Ice-cream from Nardulli, In case you were wondering, that's cardamom on the left, fig on the right, plus some macadamia mostly buried underneath. |
Lab G
6 Granville Arcade
Coldharbour Lane
Brixton SW9 8PR
Proper Italian gelato is the order of the day at this tiny ice-cream parlour in Brixton Village.
We trued the chocolate sorbet and the hazelnut ice-cream – both very, very good. Chocolate sorbet is a winner to my mind, because I love dark chocolate and find that often chocolate ice-cream is too creamy and just not chocolate-y enough. With this chocolate sorbet, the pure chocolate flavour sang through with no creaminess to get in the way.
As you may have noted, I also tried the hazelnut ice-cream at Gelupo, and I would say they were equally good.
Other flavours include stracciatella, proper vanilla (with tiny flecks of seeds), cherry and salted caramel.
Bocca
14 The High Parade
Streatham High Road
London SW16 1EX
This is my local Italian restaurant, but their home-made ice-cream is really very good. They do a very good hazelnut (are you spotting a theme here?) but actually the Bacio (kisses) variety, with chocolate and hazelnut, might be even better. I also love the very fruity, soft strawberry ice-cream. I didn’t actually have high hopes for the blueberry sorbet (blueberries are pleasant enough but to my mind don't have the strength of flavour you want in an ice-cream or sorbet) but it was much better than I expected – they had obviously used lots of fruit.
You can have it at the end of your meal – a single scoop is £1.60 and is quite a generous size, making for a very cheap dessert – or get a cone or a cup to take away.
Read part one here.
You can have it at the end of your meal – a single scoop is £1.60 and is quite a generous size, making for a very cheap dessert – or get a cone or a cup to take away.
Read part one here.
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