Summer's Ice Cream
Summer’s Ice Cream has been serving ice cream made with natural, locally sourced ingredients from the same original recipe for over 30 years.
Ice cream making is a tradition for the family business that dates back to thirties Czechoslovakia.
Tucked under a staircase in this little all-white basement area since 1991 (there were originally four stores), Instagrammable backgrounds of marble and coffee bean patterns now dot the walls.
The waffle cone recipe is the original from the beginning as well, Summer’s supposedly the first to do them in this town. There’s no extra charge for regular waffle cones here with the purchase of a single scoop, unlike most places.
With batches of ice cream made fresh every single day, ingredients go from farm to cabinet in just days. About 40 flavours are available at a time out of over 100, including limited time seasonal ones like candy cane and pumpkin spice.
Their Toronto Pothole ($5.30 for a single scoop, $1.33 extra for the deluxe chocolate-dipped waffle cone rolled in crushed nuts) is an unmissable signature, a kind of take on Rocky Road (appropriate considering Torontonians know the real thing all too well).
Rich and creamy chocolate ice cream provides the base for a textured mix of peanuts, almonds, marshmallows, chocolate chunks and a fudgy “road tar” chocolate swirl.
A waffle dish also goes for $1.33, candy and nut toppings a buck each.
Blueberry cheesecake ice cream with a real tangy blueberry puree swirl makes this a unique and fruity sundae.
Ice cream sandwiches ($6.18) are made with local Sweet Flour cookies that are more crispy than chewy, double chocolate providing a sturdy base for chocolate chip mint ice cream with Belgian Callebaut chocolate chunks.
75 cents extra gets ice cream sandwiches rolled in sprinkles for extra crunch and colour.
Pre-packed cartons ($6.99) packaged at their local dairy are available here as well as at grocery stores like Sobeys and Whole Foods. You can also pick up hand-packed cartons here for $11.49.
The name may be Summer’s but the parlour only closes when there’s a foot of snow on the ground and usually reopens somewhere between January and March depending on the weather.
Still run by the same Tokey family, the original name of the shop was Summer’s Sweet Memories. That’s certainly what you’ll get a taste of when stopping in for a cone here.
Jesse Milns