Feeling the heat in Chelsea this summer?  Head on over to Ice Cream Union.

 

Forget sprinkles full of additives. Forget synthetic bubble gum flavour.

Get ready to have your preconceptions shaken up.

Ice Cream Union is not your average ice cream parlour.

This is the real deal.

“We've been making ice cream for 12 years. First just for ourselves, and then supplying the top places in London,” says co-founder Alex Fubini.

“When we heard a site was opening up on Pavilion Road, we decided to try our first experiential retail site,” he added.

 

Breaking down the barriers

“At other parlours, there's no real interaction,  no explaining of the ingredients, no suggesting which two flavours work well together,” he says.

“We really want to break down that barrier between the consumer and the server.”

 

 

Tasting is encouraged here, and the ice cream is seriously good.

All handmade and free from colourings and preservatives, quality is at the core.

The sourcing of ingredients is one of the things that Alex believes sets it aside from other parlours.

His family comes in useful.  Alex’s brother Franco is not only Ice Cream Union’s co-founder, but the managing director at greengrocer Natoora, just across the street.

“We source everything in as raw a form as possible.

“For our blood orange sorbet, we buy blood oranges from Natoora, juice them and then create ice cream.”

“For pistachio ice cream, we buy raw pistachios, roast them and turn them into a paste ourselves,” he says.

This skips out as much processing as possible.

Much of their produce comes from Britain – the cream, milk, mint, honey to make honeycomb ice cream.

But citrus fruits tend to come from Italy.

“We’re all about transparency and nothing industrial, and you can taste that in the flavour,” he adds.

There are 12 regular flavours plus eight rotating ones.

Alex and his team are not afraid to alter machinery to make the taste right. They even 3D print their own tools.

“That is what makes it really artisanal,” Alex says.

“It’s more labour intensive but stays true to the ingredients.”

 

This article was published in Sloane Square magazine which you can read here. 

For more about the Ice Cream Union, read here.

To find out about Natoora, the Pavilion Road supermarket putting flavour first, read here.