Ice Cream Review – Page 18

Delicious Asian-Style Ice Cream at Koishi

Published on August 27, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 160 Baldwin Street, Toronto
Website: http://little-pebbles.com/koishi-ice-cream

Koishi is a collaboration between Little Pebbles (which is great) and Arthur Pezzelli, the co-founder of Bang Bang (which is beyond great).

Bang Bang serves, bar none, the best ice cream in Toronto. It’s not even close; they blow everyone else out of the water. This makes Koishi a must-visit. A new place started by one of Bang Bang’s founders? Uh, yeah, I’m all over that.

Asian-style ice cream has very much become a thing in Toronto, and as you might infer from the name, that’s what Koishi is all about. They have a variety of Japanese-influenced flavours that you can get in a cone, a cup, or a sweet bun.

I’m all about the ice cream at places like this (as much as I love Bang Bang, the cookies are a complete waste of time), so I just went with a plain scoop in a cup.

I tried the honey soba: “toasted buckwheat & caramelized honey.”

It was pretty great — the crunchy bits of soba gave it a nice toasty flavour, and the honey was pleasantly floral, with a subtle sweetness that was just right.

The quality of the ice cream itself wasn’t as perfect as Bang Bang’s — it didn’t quite have the same level of rich creaminess, and it was very subtly icy — but it’s still top-shelf stuff.

Fluffernutter Goodness at Lola’s Gelato

Published on August 23, 2018August 23, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 16 Brookers Lane, Etobicoke
Website: https://www.lolasgelato.com/

Fluffernutters are delicious. That’s a fact.

In case you’ve been living an empty sham of a life and are unaware of the magic of the fluffernutter, it’s basically like a PB and J, but with gooey marshmallow sauce subbed in for the jam. It’s the best.

They have a fluffernutter-inspired flavour of gelato at Lola’s. Obviously I had to try it.

This was my first time having the gelato Lola’s. The quality is quite good — it’s not the richest or the creamiest gelato I’ve ever had, but it’s solid. It’s above average.

The flavour (called WTF – What the Fluffernutter) consists of peanut butter gelato swirled with marshmallow sauce, with Oreo bits interspersed throughout. It was really tasty. I wish the peanut butter flavour were a bit more pronounced — it doesn’t quite recapture the gooey, peanut-buttery joys of a fluffernutter sandwich — but it’s quite good regardless.

Unique Scoops at Wong’s Ice Cream

Published on August 21, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 617 Gerrard Street East, Toronto
Website: http://www.wongsicecream.com/

Ice cream is the best (obviously), but if you ever find yourself getting bored with the same old flavours, there’s an easy solution: head to Wong’s, an Asian-inspired ice cream shop with some seriously interesting scoops.

I don’t think you’re going to find taste combinations like pineapple cilantro, wasabi honey, or toasted ramen miso anywhere else in the city (though Wong’s is far from the only Asian ice cream joint in town; Kekou Gelato is another stand-out).

I got the rosewater white chocolate jasmine, and it was seriously delicious. The texture was ever-so-slightly grainy (from the white chocolate, perhaps?), but it was otherwise excellent, with a very rich, creamy consistency.

White chocolate tends to be intensely sweet, so I was worried this would be a bit much, but the sweetness was admirably restrained. Rosewater has a very distinct, very strong flavour (it’s a bit of an acquired taste), but again, the flavours here are really subtle and well-balanced. There’s a mild floral sweetness, but it isn’t in-your-face. If you’re on the fence about rosewater, this might just be the dessert to get you on board.

Mediocre Ice Cream at Cows

Published on August 14, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 44 Queen Street, Niagara on the Lake
Website: https://cows.ca/

Cows has been a Niagara on the Lake institution since 1983, so they’re obviously doing something right. Though in this case, I think the thing they did right was picking a location that’s right in the middle of the main road in a very touristy town. Because the actual ice cream isn’t that great.

It’s relatively rich and creamy, so it’s certainly very, very far from the worst ice cream I’ve ever had. But the flavour was a pretty big shrug.

I got the Wowie Cowie, which is “vanilla ice cream, English toffee marble, chocolate flakes & moo crunch.”

The vanilla ice cream doesn’t taste like anything but generic sweetness. There’s nothing there. Plain ice cream can be amazing — the sweet cream at Ed’s, which doesn’t even have vanilla bean to fall back on, manages to pack in an impressive amount of flavour and depth. Meanwhile, this tasted like sweet nothing.

The “English toffee marble” was even worse, and there’s a lot of it rippled in there. It didn’t have any of the rich caramel flavour you’d expect from English toffee; it was just thick and sweet, like plain corn syrup.

As for the other elements, the chocolate was fine, and the moo crunch didn’t even seem to be there (I’m not sure what it was supposed to be, but I didn’t notice anything but the caramel and the chocolate).

Quality Ice Cream and Waffles at Wooffles & Cream

Published on August 8, 2018August 8, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 8360 Kennedy Road, Markham (inside New Kennedy Square Food Court)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/woofflesandcream/

Every other ice cream joint in the city now serves Hong Kong-style waffles. It’s a combo that came out of nowhere and absolutely exploded. And while I don’t think that Wooffles & Cream were the first to do it in the GTA (pretty sure Bang Bang got there first), they certainly helped popularize it.

It’s still great. They have a few different flavours of waffle that you can try; I went with the sticky toffee pudding, which is a standard waffle filled with sweet cakey chunks of the aforementioned dessert.

The waffle itself was as delicious as ever, with a nice crispy exterior and a creamy interior. The bits of sticky toffee pudding were quite tasty, though they were dryer than you’d like, and not quite as sticky and sweet as you might hope from that particular dessert.

There were also a few chewy mochi bits interspersed throughout, which were an interesting addition.

The ice cream itself (I got vanilla — earl gray was also an option) was nothing special, but the quality is decent and it’s certainly an addictive combo with the waffle.