FOOD:
I scream, you scream

Where, exactly, to scream for ice cream

by MARK SLUTSKY

It’s said that the Roman emperor Nero would send his slaves into the mountains to gather snow, which would then be mixed with flavoured syrup to create a tasty iced confection. A couple millennia later, cooling down with a sweet treat is considerably easier. You can get ice cream all over this town (some variation of it is as close as your local dep), but where’s the good stuff? While internationally-owned chain stores are everywhere, Montreal also has a very fine selection of local joints that make their own stuff and often put the big boys to shame. Here are some of the city’s finest…

Ripples (3880 St-Laurent)
A Main mainstay, squeezed between a tombstone-maker and a bookstore, Ripples has the look of your classic little ice cream parlour—a narrow space with just enough room for the fridges and a handful of customers, with a conveniently-placed bench outside. While carrying all of your standard flavours, the folks at Ripples always have a trick or two up their sleeves, offering a couple exotic numbers too.
The Mirror’s crack research team identified several flavours as being conducive to an optimum Ripples experience. If you’re in a back-to-basics kind of mood, the chocolate ice cream is superb, and perhaps the best in the city: rich and deep. If you’re feeling a little more ambitious, try the kulfi—based on the Indian dessert, it’s got a vanilla-tasting base, with chunks of cardamom, pistachio and various other spices making it an unpredictable gastronomic adventure. One taster cryptically remarked, “It invites you like vanilla, with an underlying sophistication.” The ginger is also worth mentioning—one of the few examples of genuinely hot and spicy tasting ice cream.

Meu-Meu (4458 St-Denis)
The St-Denis strip’s equivalent to Ripples, Meu-Meu is a small, charming and often-crowded place with a much-trafficked bench outside (and cute servers too, it might be added). And, like Ripples, they mix up the classics with weird experimental combos. The Meu-Meu staff also make a fine milkshake.
For those with more Catholic tastes, Meu-Meu offers blueberry, peanut butter and, also like Ripples, a ginger flavour. If you just want a classic scoop, the pralines-and-cream is sweet and well-rounded, and the chocolate mint is a near-perfect example of its kind (unlike Ripples, where the mint is a little more chemical-tasting and harder on the tongue.) The straight-up chocolate is great too, leaning towards the fudgey.

Bilboquet (1311 Bernard W.)
A ritzy joint in a ritzy neighbourhood, Bilboquet may exist to serve the Outremont elite—but that doesn’t stop it from offering connoisseurs some of the most toothsome frozen treats in the city. It’s invariably packed on summer nights, with folks spilling out of the store and on to the round tables of the outside terrasse.
Bilboquet’s fancier offerings are worth considering. The King Kong is a base of banana ice cream mixed with a generous portion of chocolate chips—and this is good banana ice cream, made with the real stuff and not the standard syrup. There’s a line of vanilla-and-fruit ice creams; the orange variety was described by one of our investigators as tasting like a “high-class creamsicle.” Don’t miss the Caramelée either—a near-scientifically perfect combination of caramel, chocolate and pralines.

Roberto Gelateria (2221 Bélanger)
Specializing in gelato, Roberto (on Bélanger near Iberville) offers some of the best of its kind you’ll find outside of Italy, with a good selection of unusual flavours. Most popular, according to the servers, is the Baci, a mixture of chocolate and hazelnut. It, and the Nocciola, which is hazelnut alone, are both unusual and incredibly tasty—lots of ice creams are made with nuts, though few have it as their principal flavour. The Granita, or lemon, should be tried as well—a real explosion of citrus flavour that’ll take your tongue by storm.