Sunny days and long weekends... it's ice cream weather. Taste seeks out some of the hottest ices in the city.
La Grotta Ices
Every Saturday, Maltby Street is the market for in-the-know SE1 locals and foodies avoiding Borough Market's weekend tourist crush. Centred on a few railway arches near Tower Bridge, this collection of established and occasional producers is a lean and well calibrated riposte to nearby Borough. St John alumnus and frequent flyer to gelato central, Sicily, Kitty Travers sets up shop from her Piaggio van, serving "cones, cups, scoops and peaks" with flavours changing each week. Think French kiwi sorbet; rhubarb and cream; and buffalo milk, Amalfi lemon and almond.
Towpath
North of the river and along a sweep of Regent's Canal straddling some of London's hipper districts, the Towpath café does soft serve in old fashioned sugared cones, an apt accompaniment to a stroll among the tight-trousered denizens of Hoxton, Dalston and Broadway Market.
The Chin Chin Laboratorists &
Marine Ices
Ice cream's avant garde and traditions get an airing near another stretch of the canal at Camden. Under the Nag Champa incense fug of Camden Lock Market sits "Europe's first nitro ice cream bar," The Chin Chin Laboratorists, where lab coated technicians creating instant, ultra-smooth ice cream with −196°C liquid nitrogen (ice cream's apparent simplicity and underlying complex chemistry is a lure for cutting-edge chefs). Up the road at Chalk Farm, Marine Ices is an authentically retro Italian gelateria - with an 80 year history alongside robustly flavoured sundaes, cassatas and bombes.
Scoop
Soho's after dinner options have swollen lately: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a wave of frozen yoghurt and a Taiwanese pearl tea bar featuring
crumpets with toppings seemingly lost in translation. Joining the fray on Brewer Street, Scoop has recently opened a sibling to its Covent Garden original, with gelati ranging through Italy's regional ingredients and flavours.
Gelupo
Just off Piccadilly, Jacob Kenedy's Gelupo is part gelateria, part deli, with an ever changing line-up of Italian classics, seasonal and more off piste flavours in gelati, granitas and sorbets. All made on-site among the white tiles and served with proper shiny milk bar napkins and wolf themed wafers. Ricotta, coffee and honey; fresh mint stracciatella; fragola grape and sour cherry: mix it up and get your card stamped for a return fix.
The Parlour at Fortnum & Mason
Fortnum & Mason boasts a proper English ice creamery in its 1950s pop-accented Parlour. It's all sundaes, knickerbocker glory and floats, with ice cream flavours in keeping with Fortnum's position as the Queen's grocer: ginger with borage honey, Pusser's British Navy rum and raisin, and Sandringham coffee.
The Icecreamists
After a 2010 pop-up parlour in Selfridges, these punks of the ice cream world have opened shop in Covent Garden (publicity came early after they served ice cream featuring a challenging key ingredient). While the infamous flavour didn't stay on the menu long, the naughty puns remain.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal &
Oddono's
Further west, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will soon add a tableside nitro-ice cream dessert cart service, with that ever winning formula of Heston brand theatrics and dry ice. Over in the little Paris end of South Ken, Oddono's has been dishing up thoroughly Italian artisan gelato and sorbets in 130 flavours to universal applause - and there's a concession at Selfridge's if you need an icy fix to face the Oxford Street scrum.
Gelupo and Oddono's will appear at Taste of London.