Dolce Gelato

Restaurant: Dolce Gelato
Cuisine: Gelato/Desserts
Last visited: August 13, 2011
Location: White Rock
Address: 15045 Marine Drive
Price Range: $10 or less

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

Food: 5
Service: 3
Ambiance: 3
Overall: 5
Additional comments:

• Small family owned gelato shop
• Fresh, made daily gelato
• Made with fresh local fruits
• High quality gourmet gelato
• Sorbets available
• Very busy/popular
• Local favourite
• Open only for the summer
• Family friendly
• Limited seating
• Eat in/Take out
• Open daily until 9pm

**Recommendations: I’d recommend all of the flavours I had. It’s hard to go wrong here, and their fruit sorbets (sorbetti) are packed with fresh local fruit.

When a place can afford to open only for a few months in the summer, selling essentially one product, you know it’s got to be something really good! And boy is Dolce Gelato making something really good!

I’ve known about this tiny family owned gelato shop for a few years, but due to its exclusive opening period, I’ve never had the opportunity to blog about it. Now I can finally give it the attention it deserves and share with you this great local favourite and hidden secret in the heart of White Rock, BC!

There’s a whole lot of choices for ice cream and “gelato” on the White Rock restaurant strip, so they don’t even win by lack of competition. This is pretty much the only one you have to visit for real gelato. It’s not ice cream, so I won’t compare it to those shops, but for gelato this is the stop, and it’s easily a local and tourist favourite.

I’d even say forget about dessert at whatever restaurant you’re at and just head here! Or order your dessert and have dessert #2 after. I like to believe gelato is part of a “liquid diet”, so it doesn’t count.

Authentic gelato should always look like the above, it should never look like a scoop. Ice cream is a scoop.

Yes, it’s no Bella Gelateria, and as much as I love Bella Gelateria, this would hands down be my second favourite! In fact it was my favourite before Bella Gelateria came along! I like it better than Dolce Amore and Amato Gelato (Mario’s Gelato), but I’m not keen on Mario’s anyways, or even really Dolce Amore. I know it’s hard to go back to anything else after Bella Gelateria, but even I can still appreciate Dolce Gelato. I fully embrace the gelato and sorbet they make here. They know what they’re doing and their prices are very fair.

They’re made fresh daily and in small batches so it’s never exposed to much air and there’s no crystallization.When the flavour is gone it’s gone and there’s no mass production or even fancy machines, and it’s simply excellent gelato.
It’s super creamy, melts fast as authentic Italian gelato should, and made with fresh and local ingredients that are high quality too. It’s not an actual scoop of gelato as authentic gelato should never be an actual scoop. You can just tell by the colours how much real fruit is in that sorbet. The apples for their apple sorbet used to be picked from the trees of White Rock, and I’m pretty sure they still are. Basically this is a must try if you’re in White Rock, and I’d consider it the “Bella Gelateria” of the suburbs.

On the table:

**Pistachio Gelato – 5.5/6

• Cones or cup. 1 flavour $3.85 2 flavours $5.45 3 flavours $6.35 Kds 1 flavour $3.20 Affogato $5.90
• I personally love pistachio, so this was my favourite. I love any nutty flavours though.
• This was incredibly rich and intense with pistachio flavour and it even had little bits of pistachio nuts in it.
• It was made with real pistachio nuts and pistachio paste and it tastes like the real deal.
• It was smooth and creamy, not too sweet and there was a surprising amount of pistachio nuts in it, which is costly, so I was impressed.
• You can tell by the colour if it’s a good pistachio gelato. The darker green in colour the better for me. See my recipe for pistachio gelato here.

**Ricotta & Caramelized Pecan – 5/6

• Cones or cup. 1 flavour $3.85 2 flavours $5.45 3 flavours $6.35 Kds 1 flavour $3.20 Affogato $5.90
• Again I have to go with a nutty flavour.
• The ricotta was very mild, being that ricotta is a mild cheese I expected in to be. It was very light and creamy and just tasted like a fior di latte or natural gelato base.
• It had a decent amount of caramelized pecan bits in it although I could use a bit more, I could always use more.
• They were crunchy and coated with crystallized caramel, but they weren’t sticking to your teeth and not too sweet either.
• It was nutty, crispy, and crunchy and I loved the sweetness the caramelized component brought to the ricotta. Delicious!

**Lavender & Honey Gelato – 5/6

• Cones or cup. 1 flavour $3.85 2 flavours $5.45 3 flavours $6.35 Kds 1 flavour $3.20 Affogato $5.90
• This was amazing! I love this combination of ingredients, so I was a fan to begin with.
• The milk was infused with lavender leaves so there was no actual lavender flowers in it. Therefore the flavour is very mild, but still obvious and it’s quite floral, but not soapy. Even lavender haters would like this because it’s nice and light.
• The honey was quite faint and it wasn’t that sweet so I don’t think there was much used.
• I would have preferred maybe a slightly higher honey content, not that it needed to be sweeter, but I did want to taste real honey bee honey.

**Peach Sorbet – 5/6

• Cones or cup. 1 flavour $3.85 2 flavours $5.45 3 flavours $6.35 Kds 1 flavour $3.20 Affogato $5.90
• The sorbetti here is amazing. All their fruit flavours are bursting with real fruit purees and they’re absolutely incredible.
• They have no cream so they’re a bit icy, but not crystallized. It’s still creamy from the generous amount of real fruit puree used.
• The peaches used were incredibly ripe and also local and the sweetness was very natural and not tart at all.
• I could actually see the pureed peach skins and bite into little pieces of peach.
• You can just tell by the texture and colours of their sorbet that they’re incredible fresh, made with real fruit, and high quality.

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