Dolce Amore

Restaurant: Dolce Amore
Cuisine: Gelato/Ice Cream/Desserts
Last visited: July 6, 2010
Location: Vancouver, BC (Commercial Drive/Grandview)
Address: 1590 Commercial Drive
Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food/Gelato: 4
Service: 4
Ambiance: 2
Overall: 4
Additional comments:

• One of the better gelato places on Commercial Drive
• Family owned
• Italian owners
• Homemade gelato and sorbet
• Local favourite, line-ups at peak hours
• Generous scoops
• Casual
• Seats 5-10
• Cash only
• Cakes/gelato to go
• Small selection of cheesecakes
• Small selection of home made pies
• Small selection of biscotti and cookies
• Open late
• Free wifi

**Recommendations: Hazelnut

Dolce Amore is a popular gelato shop on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. Commercial Drive is notorious for it’s Italian population so there’s a handful of gelato places located on the drive. Dolce Amore is definitely the local favourite on the strip and it’s one of the better gelato shops in Vancouver. It’s family owned and it keeps a loyal clientele. On this occasion I came with Kim, who is also to thank for the photos.

Honestly, it was my first time coming to Dolce Amore and it’s really hard to appreciate it especially after having Bella Gelateria. I understand that people love it and it is really good, but when you’ve had the best than everything else just seems… well mediocre, or simply not as good as it could be. Gelato is one of my favourite desserts, I can have it any time of day, but while eating my Dolce Amore gelato I just kept thinking to myself “it’s not the same,” or I kept comparing it back to Bella Gelateria. Dolce Amore is still very good, but there is better in Vancouver. For a casual gelato shop it does the job fine, but it’s not my first choice for gelato.

The sorbets were made with fresh fruits, but they’re just not as fresh as places like Bella Gelateria or Dolce Gelato in White Rock. Those ones are local fruits and so natural. Just by looking at the colour you can tell how much fresh fruit a gelato place is using in their sorbets. The ones here is still a bit ‘watered down’ and not as pure in fresh fruit flavour.

They have a nice selection of gelato and they were all pretty good. They have a quick turn over with a steady clientele so there’s a constant enough rotation that the gelatos are still very fresh. For gelato, I think it’s very reasonably priced and the scoops are quite generous. You can also get half litres, litres, and buckets to go.

Prices

1 scoop: $3.50 2 scoop: $4.50 3 scoop: $5.50 Kid’s scoop: $3

On the table:

3 Scoops of Gelato – 4/6

• Blueberry Marscapone, Hazelnut, Cookie Dough gelato $5.50
• Blueberry Marscapone Gelato – 3.5/6
  • This was good, but the blueberries didn’t taste that fresh. They tasted like preserved blueberry compote or syrup. It was like fruit syrup they put on top of sundaes, just kind of fake tasting. It had a nice creamy texture and the Marscapone was very light in flavour. I chose it so of course I liked it, but I just know it had potential to be better.
  • The blueberries also seemed more like decoration because there were maybe only two throughout the scoop.

• Hazelnut Gelato – 4/6
  • This was also very good, but it was near the end of the bucket so I had zero hazelnuts in it. They only used the whole hazelnuts to decorate the top and by then the top layer was gone.

• • It was very creamy, but not as creamy as Bella Gelateria. See what I mean, I can’t stop comparing it. I think it’s fair though, because if this is considered one of the best on Commercial Drive than why not compare it to the best in downtown Vancouver… ?

• • I like hazelnut so I like this, but I’ve definitely had better nut flavoured gelato. At Bella Gelateria he imports his pistachios from Italy for his pistachio gelato, and even at Mum’s Gelati on Denman you can taste the freshly ground nuts in his homemade gelato. Therefore compared to those, this one doesn’t really come close. I still enjoyed it though and it was my favourite of the 3 flavours.

• Cookie Dough Gelato – 3/6
  • If you love cookie dough then you’ll really LOVE this one. They decorate the top with huge chunks of cookie dough, so if you get a good scooper he/she will give you a lot of it. I don’t love cookie dough, but I felt like it on this occasion.
  • I like cookie dough, but this was a bit much for me. There was just massive chunks of it and I felt like I was just eating cookie dough. It would have been nice to have little pieces actually incorporated into the gelato itself. The cookie dough is just regular store bought chocolate chip cookie dough and surprisingly it was quite soft even being frozen.

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