When the days are hot, nothing cools you down like an ice cream cone. Just because you follow a vegan diet, however, that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on this classic summer treat. Toronto has several vegan ice cream parlours and gelato shops offering a blend of traditional and unconventional flavours, made using seasonal summer fruits and dairy substitutes, like coconut and cashew milk. Here are five vegan ice cream spots worth checking out this summer.
Booyah
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Opened in the summer of 2015, Booyah is a cozy ice cream parlour located in midtown that specializes in everything from hard scoops to ice cream sandwiches. All of their items can be crafted from vegan ice creams, featuring house-made cashew milk, without compromisinging the quality of the finished treat. Booyah also sells their vegan ice creams by the pint. The flavours rotate frequently, but past flavours have included chocolate, chocolate mint, vanilla, taro coconut, German chocolate, hokey pokey (vanilla with homemade sponge toffee chunks) and espresso.
Honey’s
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Owned and operated by baker Ashley Wittig (a co-founder of beloved vegan bakery Bunner’s Bake Shop), Honey’s is known for dairy-free, plant-based ice creams that taste like the real thing. Not only does Honey’s vegan ice cream taste good, but it feels good, too — a portion of Honey’s monthly profits go directly towards several Indigenous-led organizations. There are currently 14 refreshing flavours on the menu, including two special flavours for the month of June: tiger tail and bubble gum. Other flavours include out-of-the-box blends like peanut butter and saltine crackers, plain yogurt and blueberry jam, earl grey and Atlantic salted caramel, alongside the classics like strawberry, chocolate chip cookie dough and cookies and cream, to name a few.
Delight Chocolate
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Run by husband-and-wife duo Jennifer and Jeff, Delight Chocolate is an ice cream shop that prides itself on its use of locally sourced, organic and fair trade ingredients, including chocolate that comes straight from the Dominican Republic and fresh summer fruits delivered from sustainable Ontario farms. There are a number of vegan ice creams on the menu, including vanilla, chocolate peanut butter chip, Ontario strawberry and Market Monkey (banana, peanut butter chocolate chips and melted caramel toffee). All of the shop’s dairy-free ice creams use organic coconut milk from Thailand as a base. Delight also offers house-made sorbets in fruity flavours like rhubarb and lemon ginger.
M!LK Vegan Gelato
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Operating out of the plant-based Italian restaurant, Pizzeria Du (run by Roger Yang, who also owns Avelo), M!LK Vegan Gelato is a small-batch plant-based ice cream shop. M!LK sells 24 different kinds of gelato from Pizzeria Du’s takeout window. All of the 500 mL pints are made using coconut milk. There are classic gelato flavours like chocolate, coffee and dulce de leche, while other more creative flavours include maple pecan, stout beer and creamsicle (orange and vanilla). There are also four vegan sorbettos available in hibiscus, tamarind, orange and passionfruit.
Death in Venice
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Named after an Italian-French drama of the same title, Death in Venice is a specialty gelato shop run by couple Madellena Fuller and Kaya, who won the 2015 Chopped Canada title for their lemon, ricotta and rosemary ice cream. They used their prize money to buy Death in Venice’s Italian Carpigiani gelato machine. There are nearly 30 gelato flavours on the menu, as well as another 20 unconventional vegan flavours to choose from, including fruit-forward blends like raspberry chipotle, honeydew melon and mint and peach prosecco bellini, as well as chocolatey scoops like blueberry cocoa sherry, chocolate coconut cardamom and chocolate sour cherry.
