Top 5 gelato in Toronto
Published July 12, 2024 at 4:31 pm
Toronto is home to lots of great gelato, as is the case with many wonderful Italian creations. Summer hasn’t really started in the city until you make a visit to your local gelato shop for a cold, creamy treat.
While good gelato is everywhere, the most popular spots do way more than just mastering the basics. The people behind these gelato shops have often travelled abroad to learn more about the art of crafting gelato, and source the best ingredients to create some of the most creative flavours.
Here are some of the top spots to go to beat the heat with a cup or cone of ice cold gelato.
The family that owns this spot is actually Italian, and they have brought back traditional recipes and ingredients like Amalfi lemons and Bronte pistachios from Italy.
Their award-winning gelato is made fresh in house daily, and aside from premium ingredients they include components like their own homemade jam, so don’t miss out on a flavour that includes that if it’s available. Every serving of gelato is garnished with a cute and tasty little wafer cookie, an added bonus detail you won’t find at many other places.
They offer flavours like brie fig walnut, Sicilian pistachio, wildberry cheesecake, Bacio, stracciatella, tiramisu, espresso and Amarena cherry. Mizzica has two locations, one on Queen West and and one near Yonge and Eglinton.
4 – Nani’s Gelato
You can find the most creative flavours at multiple locations of this shop, like mango chocolate chip, cereal milk, double Biscoff, olive oil sea salt and saffron cardamom kulfi. The flavours rotate quickly, so there’s always something fun and new to try. In addition to regular gelato, they also do soft serve and gelato bars.
The gelato from these places is light and fluffy, but the flavours are punchy and bold. The founder of Nani’s trained in gelato production at the University of Wisconsin’s Ice Cream Short Course and alongside an Italian artisanal gelato maker.
3 – Bar Ape
Soft serve gelato is the specialty of this secretive, hip takeout gelato counter hidden on a side street just off St. Clair West. There are only ever two flavours (plus a twist of both) available at a time of soft serve gelato, and it’s cash only. Lineups often form on sweltering summer days.
The flavours typically emphasize seasonal produce, and on any given weekend they might be serving gelato and ice cream in flavours like passionfruit, guava, buttermilk, Thai iced tea, fresh mint, chocolate, pomegranate, pistachio, mango, natural yogurt, lime leaf, Ontario strawberry and toasted coconut. They also serve gelato bars.
The texture of the soft serve style meshes incredibly well with the creamy silkiness of the gelato and is a perfect canvas for all the delightful flavours this shop creates.
2 – Death in Venice
You’ll find the most out-there flavours like cheeseboard, peanut butter and croissant, bourbon and smoked chocolate, passion fruit and lemongrass, and Turkish delight at this gelato lab on Dundas West. They’ve taken home awards for their expert gelato making technique and extreme innovation.
Their gelato is made using local produce, and the head gelato maker Kaya Ogruce calls himself a “mad scientist.” Despite all the fancy ingredients and imaginative combinations, the gelato here is just darn good, with a creamy texture and a balance that allows all the flavours to sing. For example, equal notes of fruit, nuts and cheese harmonize in the cheeseboard gelato in a way that tastes like an entire fancy snack plate all in one bite.
Death in Venice also offers gelato production tours complete with tastings where you can go behind the scenes and see how it all gets made.
While this St. Clair West parlour prides themselves on their unique icy granita, some of the best and only of its kind in Toronto, their gelato is absolutely not to be missed. The pair behind the shop went to Carpigiani Gelato University to study granita and gelato making, and it shows in their fluffy but airy gelato that’s packed with flavour and made out of some of the best ingredients available.
Some of their classics are fior de panna and stracciatella, sterling examples of staple flavours that are rich and unbelievably creamy in their simplicity. They offer premium nut flavours like pistachio from Bronte and hazelnut from Piemonte that have an incredible depth of nuttiness to them.
Most of their gelato is made with an organic milk base, and everything is made in house.
