Cow & the Moon

Hello #icecreamthurs! Let’s eat icecream to pretend it’s still summer. I love Cow & the Moon – it’s pretty much the best gelato I’ve ever had – so I’m always happy to go back and try more of their fabulous flavours. On this visit, I chose two of their fruity sorbets to try, one new and one old favourite. The new flavour was the peach sorbet, which I sampled and fell in love with. The peach flavour is sweeter than other peach sorbets I’ve tried, so the effect is more like eating a sweet, ripe peach, which I really liked. The texture is perfection – as creamy as any dairy-based icecream – and the flavour is beautifully intense. I also went for an old favourite, the black and blue sorbet, which tastes just like a blackberry chewy lolly. This is the kind of flavour that gets the saliva going, it’s so sweet and tart and bold. Dad ordered the World Gelato Championship-winning Affogato flavour, which I tasted too – oh my. There were caramelised almonds in it, as well as the perfect coffee and vanilla flavours. Swoon. Must visit for anyone heading to Sydney.

Cow & the Moon, 181 Enmore Road, Enmore, NSW, no website

RivaReno Gelato

RivaReno Gelato was recommended to me by a friend – they make their gelato fresh daily from scratch, and have a great range of flavours. I was very excited to see a sorbet section on the menu, which included two of my favourite flavours – raspberry and peach. I decided to go for the peach, as it’s the rarer flavour, and was surprised by the creamy texture of the sorbet. Definitely no icy nonsense here, this is the real deal. I was struck by how buttery the flavour tasted, with an almost nutty undertone, meaning that there was clearly no artifical peach flavouring going on. The flavour seemed to develop and become more peachy the more I ate, although it certainly wasn’t a particularly sweet sorbet. I really haven’t had any icecream/sorbet like this before – it was complex and authentic, with flecks of peach skin throughout. I also tasted my friend’s lemon sorbet, which got my saliva going – incredibly tart and acidic, it would be the perfect palate cleanser after a nice meal. The quality here is excellent and I would also be keen to try their chocolate-coated gelato on a stick, which looked amazing in the display cabinet.

RivaReno Gelato, 280 Crown Street, Darlinghurst, NSW, http://rivareno.com.au/

Gelatiamo

Gelatiamo is a lovely little cafe, offering a great range of gelato with about half of the flavours being sorbets (yay!). There’s plenty of seating inside, so we decided to dine in, and were served our choices in cute sundae glasses with long spoons. Listed as one of the top 10 gelaterias in Sydney, this was my first visit, so I picked a flavour that can be hard to find – mandarin sorbet ($4.90 for a single scoop). I was surprised by how huge the serving was (dine in is highly recommended) – I would have easily thought of this as a double serve, but Dad’s double was piled up even higher! I had a quick taste of his hazelnut and pistachio choices – both were creamy and nutty, with perfectly smooth textures that didn’t have ‘bits’ in them. I then got stuck into my sorbet. Don’t order this flavour if you like sweet sorbets – the citrus flavour in this sorbet is really intense, but also quite bitter. I found this really refreshing, and the flavor screamed MANDARIN! I could imagine this being a great palate cleanser after a heavy meal – fresh, sharp and delicious.

Gelatiamo, 362 Pacific Highway, Lindfield, NSW, http://www.gelatiamo.com.au/

7 Apples Gelato

Ok, if you’ve seen it, you know that the 7 Apples Gelato store in Emporium isn’t just cute, it’s the most freaking adorable icecreamery ever. A little icecream cart with a bicycle attached, this tiny stall sucked me in with free samples and sorbet options. Who could resist? Offering a limited range (around 8 flavours – their main store is in St Kilda) on their cute menu board, I opted for a single scoop of the mango sorbet ($5.50), which was served in a reasonably sized up and had a creamy, pale colour. The mango flavour was nice – authentic, but not as strong as other mango sorbets I’ve tried in Melbourne – and there was a good amount of sweetness to it. The texture was again around the mid-range of quality – not the creamiest I’ve ever tried, but not overly icy either, so definitely in the solidly ‘good’ category. I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to order this flavour again (nice was it was), given the range of flavours they offer, but I would recommend stopping by, if only to marvel at the set up, uniform and, of course, to enjoy the free samples!

7 Apples Gelato, Emporium Melbourne (Level 3), 287 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne VIC, http://www.7applesgelato.com/

Sublime Gelato

This will be the last #icecreamthurs post for 2015 – thanks for playing along and I look forward to sharing more icecream discoveries in 2016. Westside Acton is one of my favourite places to have lunch – I haven’t had a bad meal there, and now that the weather is warming up, it’s a great place to laze and enjoy the sunshine. I met up with a friend for lunch, and after eating we didn’t really want to leave, so we picked up gelato from Sublime, which has recently opened (yay!). The range of flavours is quite broad for such a small stall, and whilst the $5 per scoop isn’t quite a good value as say, Frugii ($5 for two scoops), the gelato here is good quality. After considering the rather tempting Belgian chocolate and the white chocolate and raspberry coulis flavours, I went for the dairy-free option and picked a single scoop of the strawberry sorbet. The cup was a standard scoop size, and we found seats out in the sunshine to enjoy our gelato. The strawberry flavour was very sweet was consistent throughout. Although a bit melty, I would happily order it again.

Sublime Gelato, Westside Acton, 3 Barrine Drive, Acton ACT

Dom’s Coffee Bar

One of my friends has broken her foot, and after failing to get a park at Floriade that she could walk from, we went for a short stroll along the lakefront near the National Library instead. No outing is complete for me without food of some kind, so we stopped in at Dom’s Coffee Bar for gelato. There isn’t a huge flavour selection, but that’s to be expected for a small kiosk. I was excited to see that they had several dairy free options and I went for the Lemon Lime flavour, while my friend chose the Passionfruit ($4.50 for one scoop in a cup). We walked/hobbled over to the wooden seats to soak up the sun, and I was very excited to discover that my gelato did in fact taste a lot like a Lemon Lime Splice! Whilst lacking the creaminess of a Splice, the gelato retained the strong citrus flavour that I find so refreshing. The texture was slightly melty, so definitely softer than I would have liked, but that didn’t detract from the flavour. I also tried the Passionfruit – the flavour was really crisp and the texture was better. I’d go back again for sure.

Dom’s Coffee Bar, Parkes Place, Parkes ACT, no website

Gelato Messina

A perfect spring day really does call for icecream, so we stopped in at Gelato Messina in Surry Hills. I love the vibrant colours and huge spheres of icecream in the display cabinet at Messina stores, and this one was no exception. The sorbets at the entrance caught my eye and I ordered a cup of the raspberry and mandarin sorbets ($6.80 for two scoops). The bottom scoop of mandarin was a bit bigger than the top scoop of raspberry, but the whole serving together was massive and I took my time enjoying it at the park across the road. I won’t talk too much about texture, because by the time I crossed the road the sun had started melting the edges and it went downhill from there (as to be expected), but the flavours were fantastic. The raspberry had a particularly intense flavour that is probably the most concentrated pure raspberry flavoured sorbet I’ve tried. The balance betwen tartness and sweetness was just right. The mandarin flavour was equally lovely – it was really juicy and whilst not as intense, it was beautifully refreshing and had real clarity of flavour. Ah Messina, you never fail to impress.

Gelato Messina, 389 Crown Street, Surry Hills, NSW http://www.gelatomessina.com/au/