Restaurant: Kekou Gelato House
Location: 14 Baldwin Street, Toronto, ON M5T 1L1
Price Range: $
[wp-review]
After a disappointing dinner at McRamyun, C and I headed to Kekou as it is our favourite place for gelato :). Kekou Gelato has been opened for quite a while now and they are famous for their Asian inspired flavors gelato. I don’t think there are any ice cream palour in Toronto that have a vast selection of unique flavors like this place, I mean, they have everything from alcohol to even durian flavor gelato!
Kekou is quite small with a few seats inside and benches on the outside, and it’s more of a grab and go place. The back is the kitchen and all of their ice cream is made in house, 100% stabilizer free and they use real fruits/tea for all of their flavors!
Although Kekou can get busy really quickly, the staff are super efficient so you will hardly ever have to line up. They are extremely generous with their samples as well, don’t be shy and keep sampling until you find the right flavors!!
In general I find that Kekou tends to change their flavors once every few months, with a few limited editions during June or July. Note that they close in the winter, so make sure to stock up a few pints of your favourite flavors to get your kekou gelato fix :p. Other than getting your gelato in a cup, you can also get them in cones, wait, flavored cones!! Admittedly I have never tried the flavored cones since I’m a messy eater, I will try on my next visit :).
- Tsingtao peach: taste just like beer LOL. Obviously you won’t get drunk out of this, but the beer flavor wasn’t too strong so it didn’t overpower the peach at all!
- Roasted oolong tea: one of my favourite. Not too sweet, quite fragrance with a hint of bitterness from roasted tea.
- Whisky green tea: There was just a hint of whisky with a not too creamy green tea flavor, both flavors were not too strong of either spectrums and complimented each other well.
- Osmanthus plum: this is quite an unique flavor. There was a hint of fruit and flower with an underlying taste of something woody. Not too sweet but a bit salty and sour, a very refreshing gelato.
Though I only took pictures of my most recent visits, I have came here multiple times and tried other flavors as well:
- Durian: very pungent and taste exactly like durian with no filler! I recommend trying this flavor the last as it can easily overpower your tongue and you wouldn’t be able to taste anything else.
- Spicy salted pineapple/mango: I remember my family likes to dip sweet pineapple/mango into this mixture of chili salt and the flavor of the gelato were spot on! There was just enough kick of spiciness that won’t make your tongue go numb, and the sweetness of the pineapple/mango balanced out the flavor.
- Viet coffee: had a strong espresso flavor and very creamy. Apparently they have this drink available in store with the drip style as well, I definitely recommend getting this!
- Hong Kong Milk Tea: Another favourite. Very rich and taste just like drinking a cold HK milk tea.
- Avocado Banana: a bit too rich for my taste, not too sweet and I think this is even better than Bang Bang ice cream!
- Thai Milk Tea: I think this is a seasonal flavor as I didn’t see it in store. However I didn’t like it as much as the gelato from Millie Creperie, again it’s really creamy and the black tea flavor is not apparent.
I LOVE LOVE Kekou Gelato. I can’t count how many times I have been back here already, and every person that I have introduced to this place LOVE it as well. Although the texture is more of an ice cream than gelato, it’s the unique flavors that really make this place special :). Their gelato have real concentrated flavor with actual taste of fruits/fresh ingredients with no artificials. I also appreciate that they offer mini cooler bags for you to take home the gelato, so you know for sure your precious gelato is safe and sound! 😉