sim lil toronto

Toronto's secret new ice cream spot makes unreal flavours

A new Toronto ice cream spot is doing the most unreal flavours, and will even churn you up your own custom batch.

Sim and Lil makes artisanal ice cream, chocolate and confectioneries, as well as things like their own caramel sauce and chocolate chips, all in-house.

Currently only available for delivery or pickup from their anonymous 16 Ossington Ave. location that looks a lot like an old grey haunted house, they come out with new flavours every month.

The funny thing is: nothing to do with the actual ice cream happens on Ossington. It's simply a pickup point. The production kitchen is in Mississauga and they store the ice cream at and distribute it from 1038 Queen St. W.

They do classic flavours like double chocolate, hazelnut chocolate and mint chip, but also limited edition feature varieties like apple pie and cherry rose sorbet. Pints ring in at $12.50 and you can order online.

For a minimum order of 10 litres of ice cream or one kilogram of chocolate, they can design custom flavours just for you.

The concept comes from Ali Kaabi, who ran the now-closed Entice Culinary Lounge and studied at George Brown College.

"During the lockdown, I experimented with foods with different methods of preproduction, like using Pacojet, working with liquid nitrogen and immersion cooking," Kaabi tells blogTO.

He collected recipes from friends in the food industry from Spain, Germany, Norway and Italy, combining them with old family recipes to come up with the ideas for Sim and Lil ice creams.

When it comes to the name of the brand, though, it's all inspired by Kaabi's family. His grandmothers were named Sim and Lilly.

"They loved to bake and cook together which I always found interesting," says Kaabi.

"Two grandmas working well together with no spite, I was actually proud of them for doing that."

Keep watching out for those new flavours every month: Apparently black sesame seed and tiramisu flavours are coming soon.

Lead photo by

Sim and Lil


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