Iconoglace is a bar laitier in the old Québécois sense — the neighbourhood ice cream counter — reimagined by people who take the craft seriously. Everything turns on soft serve made in house: a vegan, lactose-free version churned daily with oat milk, real fruit, and no artificial colouring or flavouring, served alongside classic Coaticook soft serve and available as a twist of the two. Almost everything on the board can be made vegan for a small supplement, the flavours rotate constantly (the current ones are announced on Instagram rather than printed), and the whole enterprise has the cheerful irreverence of a place that names its desserts after George Michael, Abba and a resident anaconda.
The foundations are simple and very good. Coaticook soft serve comes in vanilla, chocolate or twist, from a mini at $3.50 to a regular at $7.25; the homemade vegan soft serve runs a little higher and is also sold in 500ml tubs to take home. Waffle cones are baked fresh every day, in original pure butter or a vegan chia-based version ($2.50, or $2.65 gluten-free). Dips range from a thin, crisp classic chocolate shell to a run of Belgian chocolates — milk, dark, fleur de sel, hazelnut. There's homemade hard ice cream too, made with real cream, real fruit and real mix-ins, in a cup or cone at $6.25 for one scoop, $9.50 for two and $10.25 for three. And then there is the Iconoglace Drumstick, the mother of all cones: a large homemade waffle cone filled with soft serve, given a caramel, fudge or warm peanut butter centre, dipped in chocolate shell and rolled in roasted peanuts, from $11.50.
The Hurricanes are the house signature and, by their own billing, Montreal's most decadent — a swirl of soft serve blitzed with one or several toppings, from homemade cookie dough, brownie and hazelnut praliné cookie dough to Oreo, Skor, Kit Kat, Reese's, Coffee Crisp, Smarties, dulce de leche, strawberry and raspberry compote, and freshly pressed lemon or Orange Julep ($8.75 small, $10.25 medium, $11.25 large). Beyond the classics sit the specials: the Absolutely Speculoos with pear-vanilla compote, dulce de leche and speculoos crumble; The Killer, with raspberry compote, brownie, a hot fudge centre and crispy chocolate; the 420 Hurricane of Oreo, cookie dough and brownie (all around $11.75); The New York State of Mind, a cheesecake Hurricane that changes with the season; and the Hurricane of the Sundae, which is last week's sundae of the moment mixed up and sold off while it lasts. The sundaes are equally maximalist — the Vintage Deluxe Supreme with hot fudge or caramel, waffle-cone-and-peanut crumble and a cherry on top ($9.75); the Mont-Royal, a mountain-sized tribute to the city with hot fudge, hot caramel, a whole chocolate-pecan cookie, warm peanut butter and a pretzel-pecan-peanut crumble ($10.95); Arruda's Delight, built around a whole nata tart from Pâtisserie Rosario ($9.95); the Cool Frénésie, layering pistachio shortbread and lemon sponge with raspberry compote and grilled pistachios; and the George Michael, which puts the Funk in the banana with a chocolate-dipped frozen banana rolled in roasted peanuts, praliné drizzle and toasted hazelnut crumble (both $12.95).
To drink, the slushes are a genuine local oddity: Fluide Glacial is the only maple syrup slush in Montreal, flavoured with homemade fruit syrups from morello cherry and haskap to sea buckthorn, rhubarb and passion fruit ($6.95 to $8.50), while Splash is the grown-up version — less sugar, more freshness — built on the same maple base with fresh-pressed orange, lemon, lime or grapefruit. Any of them will be turned into a float for a couple of dollars more, and the floats have a section of their own: raspberry-lemon, an iced tea float made with Camellia Sinensis peach black tea, the Kombu-Float of passion fruit kombucha and maple slush (always vegan), a Flirt lemonade float in mango, raspberry, lime-mint, blackberry or clementine, and Shirley, Where R U?, the Shirley Temple homage with 7Up, boba pearls and homemade grenadine. Espresso arrives via the Iconoglace Affogato, with pistachio-cinnamon-cardamom crumble, and its baroque cousin the Tiramisu-Per Trouper, complete with lady fingers, mascarpone mousse, homemade amaretti and a choice of pure pistachio or choco-hazelnut spread. Milkshakes can all be veganised with gluten-free oat milk. For children — and for anyone willing to order it out loud — there's Unicorn Poop, vanilla soft serve dusted with magic unicorn dust and loaded with candy and cotton candy, the Anaconda Poop, and The Flash in Four Colours, a small riot of slush, bubbles and ice cream.
Homemade to an almost obsessive degree, generous to the point of comedy, and unusually good at making the vegan version the equal of the original, Iconoglace is where Montreal's summer gets eaten standing up on the pavement.