Vancouver may spend a good portion of the year under cloud cover, but that has never stopped this city from taking ice cream extremely seriously.
The best ice cream shops in Vancouver run the gamut from polished French-style parlours and old-school gelaterias to tiny neighbourhood scoop shops turning local berries, tea, herbs, spices and plenty of unexpected ingredients into frozen gold. Some specialize in velvety gelato. Others pile crunchy bits into gloriously maximalist ice cream. One offers so many flavours that choosing one can trigger a minor existential crisis.
Whether you’re looking for a cone after the beach, an elaborate sundae, an excellent vegan scoop or a pint destined to disappear directly from the freezer, start here.
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The Vancouver ice cream debate has its Coke-versus-Pepsi camps, and Earnest has been firmly on one side of it since 2012. Rich, beautifully textured scoops range from crowd-pleasers like salted caramel and London Fog to whiskey hazelnut, baklava, blackberry coriander and seriously good vegan flavours. Even the ice cream sandwiches are dangerous. The reusable glass pint jars have become a local freezer staple for good reason.
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La Glace approaches ice cream with the elegance of a French pâtisserie and just enough playfulness to keep things interesting. Crème de la crème is vanilla turned all the way up, chocolate ganache deploys serious Valrhona power and coconut pandan proves vegan ice cream deserves far more than consolation-prize status. Add tasting flights, house-made madeleines and meringues, and suddenly one scoop feels irresponsibly restrained.
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The name tells you when to go: always. Rain or Shine makes Philadelphia-style ice cream with B.C. dairy and has built a devoted following around flavours that manage to be clever without getting silly. Blueberry balsamic, honey lavender, London Fog and malted milk chocolate honeycomb are enduring favourites, while rotating seasonal scoops keep regulars checking back. And yes, those house-made waffle cones deserve their own fan club.
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A relative newcomer that has wasted very little time entering Vancouver’s great ice cream argument. KOBO opened with serious family ice-cream credentials and a small-batch approach built around natural, locally sourced ingredients. Pistachio is unapologetically nutty, while orange chocolate chip, tahini and roasted walnut and caramelized banana show off the shop’s knack for flavours that sound intriguing and actually deliver.
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Come here when vanilla suddenly feels terribly unimaginative. Elephant Garden built its following on Asian-inspired flavours such as Vietnamese coffee, Hong Kong milk tea and mango coconut sticky rice, with rotating creations regularly venturing into tea, tropical fruit and other delicious territory. The move for indecisive people is a flight, which transforms “I can’t choose” from a problem into an extremely sound dessert strategy.
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Passione is what happens when gelato nerdiness becomes an extremely useful public service. The micro-batch shop near Parq turns out intensely flavoured creations ranging from Bronte pistachio and black sesame to yuzu honey yogurt. Don’t skip the Akbar Mashti, a wonderfully aromatic combination of saffron, rose water and pistachio that has been part of the lineup from the beginning.
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This East Broadway sleeper deserves considerably more attention. La Dulceria specializes in generous scoops with a Mexican streak, which means a freezer case where café con leche and Mexican vanilla can mingle with passionfruit, mango raspberry and creamy limonada. When horchata or Mexican hot chocolate shows up among the rotating flavours, act accordingly. The portions are not shy. Neither should you be.
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There’s no need for stunt flavours when the fundamentals are this good. Motoretta marries traditional Italian gelato-making with excellent B.C. ingredients, producing silky hazelnut, espresso, stracciatella, Amarena cherry and Bronte pistachio alongside seasonal creations. The waterfront-adjacent location also makes this an extremely convenient excuse to acquire gelato before a Coal Harbour stroll. Consider it urban planning.
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Bella helped teach Vancouver to take gelato seriously, and it remains a reliable downtown answer to the eternal question: dessert now or dessert immediately? Expect classic Italian technique alongside playful seasonal flavours, with multiple locations around the city if Robson isn’t convenient. The texture is lush, the nut flavours are especially persuasive and combining two scoops is clearly just responsible research.
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Part dessert shop, part science experiment, Mister freezes its ice cream to order using liquid nitrogen, producing unusually dense, silky results without needing a freezer case full of pre-made tubs. Flavours rotate with the seasons, while ice cream sandwiches can be dipped, topped and even torched crème-brûlée-style. There are now locations in Yaletown, on Robson and in Kits, so dramatic clouds of nitrogen are never too far away.
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