Best ice cream parlours in KL

Inside Scoop is one of KL’s most well-known ice cream brands with outlets found throughout the city’s popular malls and neighbourhoods. The secret to their success is their consistently full-bodied and flavourful ice cream using natural ingredients, and their always-smiling staff who are more than willing to let you sample every flavour available. You can’t go wrong with their daily rotation of flavours; but if we had to pick our favourites, it’d be the Valrhona chocolate or cendol. Whether you have your ice cream in a freshly baked waffle cone or slightly melted on a warm, buttery waffle, Inside Scoop has just what you need when you’ve had a hard day. 

A few minutes’ walk from Changkat Bukit Bintang is this gelateria which opened in 2015. Since then, it has garnered a reputation for being one of the best in the city and can now be found in popular areas across KL, including Dataran Merdeka and Central Market. A big part of Jersey Jack’s appeal is its creamy and rich gelato, made using Jersey cow milk sourced from Sungai Buloh’s Bright Cow farms. Being a home-grown brand has encouraged them to go beyond the familiar flavours of tiramisu, biscotti and vanilla; local flavours like durian, assam boi with apple and tangy lime, and mangosteen have also found its way into the selection of 33 flavours.

Since this Bangsar-based gelateria started in August 2017, their repertoire of flavours has expanded beyond the safe bets of lychee watermelon sorbet, Biscoff cookie and Valrona chocolate, and into more esoteric offerings like Avocado Mango and Berry Cheesecake, as well as the occasional ‘Mystery Flavours’ that are only revealed after you’ve tried guessing them. Their alcoholic ice creams are also worth a shout – their whisky and green tea is a favourite, as is their rum and raisin, with raisins that are exceptionally plump with alcohol.

Ice cream's good enough as it is, but spike it with alcohol and you've got a game changer, making ordinary scoops of yore very vanilla. The Ice Cream Bar in Desa Sri Hartamas (by the same people behind crowd-favourite Inside Scoop) specialises in alcoholic ice creams; think boozy Inside Scoop favourites such as Smoked Cognac, XO Cranberry, beer and more. We like the brandy-infused dark chocolate Smoked Cognac and XO-infused cranberry and beer – your after-work drink in a cone, sorted.

This soft serve brand is the brainchild of Joe Lim, a Penangite who first launched Urban Artisan in 2016 in George Town and grew a cult following before opening another outlet in Johor Bahru the following year, and one most recently in Petaling Street. Their flavours are as colourful as their appearances suggest: their best-seller is the curiously sky blue Oceanic Sea Salt, a pleasant flavour that’s good on its own – think of it as a cream-rich salted caramel ice cream, without the caramel – or paired with more intense flavours like Valrhona dark chocolate or Coal Black Thai Coconut. The selection of six individual flavours and two combo flavours changes every week, so there’s always a reason to return.

Business is booming for Softsrve; they've been swirling ice cream since 2015 at their flagship Damansara Uptown outlet and have since opened outlets in Sri Petaling, Pavilion Elite, MyTOWN and Johor Bahru. They've long ditched their trademark cup of ice cream served in another cup of dry ice to keep the ice cream from melting, but the current soft serve ice cream in flavoured cones (red velvet and matcha anyone?) befit the roasted oolong tea and peppermint flavours.

Can vegan ice cream really taste good? At Kind Kones, it can. Nut milk (like almond or cashew) or coconut milk replaces the dairy base we're familiar with, resulting in scoops of ice cream that are lighter and more delicate with a pleasing aftertaste that depends on the base ingredient. Its dark chocolate ice cream (our go-to) has a lingering coconut flavour, while the cashew milk flavour carries through in the jackfruit ice cream. With ice cream this good, you may almost forget it’s vegan.

This ice cream parlour in Damansara Kim relies on the New Zealand-made Kapiti ice cream as the base for their creative desserts. For instance, you’ll find not one, but several types of affogato: there’s Rosemary-infused Extra Virgin Olive Oil & Smoked Sea Salt, Brownies Chunk Espresso Salted Caramel, and Pandan Rice Cake with Salted Gula Melaka. Also worth ordering is their ice cream burrito with two scoops of ice cream, Nutella and crushed hazelnuts. Kapiti’s flavours do occasionally venture off the list of favourites: lemongrass and ginger, feijoa and pear sorbet, and nectarine and muscovado are just some of the unconventional options on offer.