Unicone: a Review

Right on the corner of St-Denis and Roy street is a small ice cream shop called Unicone. I've noticed the place since last year, with its pink walls and little white clouds, but it took a freaking pandemic and an intense ice cream craving for me to finally go. In all honesty, I thought it was called "Unicorn" until 2 weeks ago and was always kinda confused about why it would be called this way... Unicone makes way more sense.

The shop is run by two sisters, who opened it together only 1 year ago. As they both love making deserts and travelling, they wanted to create original ice cream flavours that would make their clients travel the world. This is also why every week they offer a different soft serve ice cream, known as "Le Nomade". All of their ice cream is entirely homemade (they even have their own cows for the milk). (I'm kidding.) Their ice cream really is homemade though and it's also prepared by them! Their soft serve ice creams are also lactose free, so that everyone can enjoy.

Anyhow,

I got to taste test all of their flavours, including their Cornet Nomade of the week! So here are my thoughts:

MANGO STICKY RICE

I was shocked with how spot on the flavour of this ice cream was! Well done! The taste of sticky rice, coconut cream and mango mixes so well together and creates a delicious, creamy and sweet taste.

BAKLAVA

I was super excited to taste this flavour, as I love baklava and the fact that it is "scented with Lebanese rose water" got me all excited. It sounds so fresh and... aesthetic! (Although aesthetic is not a taste but... anyways you get what I mean so shush). The way it is served is also very cute, as it is garnished with little pieces of pistachios, baklava and dried rose petals. I must say however, that I did expect the ice cream to be more flavourful... The rose water did not taste and I found the taste of baklava to be subtle. I feel like I mostly tasted the pistachios, as there were pieces of it in the ice cream. Although I did enjoy the pistachio pieces and the lightness of the ice cream, I expected a bit more flavour.

GULAB JAMUN

I was intrigued about how this ice cream would taste, because if you've ever eaten some gulab jamun you know that it's HELLA sweet. Like seriously, that desert is basically just sweet syrup fried in sweet syrup. I don't know how to explain it, but basically it's SWEET. The ice cream was far from that thankfully. The sweetness came from little pieces of gulab jamun found in the ice cream itself, so you get the taste without all of the extra sweetness. At first I thought that they had used vanilla ice cream, but then learnt that it actually had cardamon and rose water in it... In all honesty, I did not taste that at all. Although I appreciated the little pieces of gulab jamun in the ice cream, and that it wasn't overly sweet, I would've enjoyed a bit more flavour! Gulab Jamun is a strong tasting desert after all.

FRESH FIGS AND YOGURT

I also loved this ice cream! It was sooooo creamy! I kept having this french word come to mind to describe it: "onctueux". Although I have to admit it would be hard to miss a greek yogourt ice cream, as it already has a creamy texture, they still nailed it! The honey drizzle on top also added an umph of sweetness that was perfect. In my opinion, the Greek yogourt and fresh figs created a soft mix that screams Summer and I absolutely loved it.

UBE HALAYA

Goddamn this was so good. I need to Google what the hell Ube is. It reminds me of a tarot bubble tea (without being overly sweet as the bubble teas often are). The taste also reminded me of milk chocolate. So to me it tasted like a mix of tarot and milk chocolate. I know it sounds weird, but I loved it!

CORNET NOMADE - Pêche Melba

The Cornet Nomade of the week when I went was Pêche Melba, a mix of vanilla and peach soft serve ice creams/sorbets with a raspberry coulis. It tasted delicious and sweet! One thing I noted though is that OMG it melts so fast!!! I'm a slow eater so I had to rush through eating this ice cream, it kept melting all over my hands and people where staring at me real hard (but it's okay cause I like the attention). Something I really liked about it, even though it might seem like a small detail to most, was that they used what I consider to be a real ice cream cone! As you can see on the picture, it's a wafered cone, not those tiny flimsy cones they usually have for soft serves.

ALL IN ALL

All in all, I enjoyed these ice creams and I liked the original selection of flavours. I wasn't the only one enjoying my treat - Unicone seems to already have a couple of regular customers, as a man who called himself an "avid Yelp reviewer" informed me. Not kidding, it was pretty funny to have a stereotypical middle aged man tell me how he "loves writing reviews on Yelp when he goes somewhere new". You guys... now we know who writes those Yelp reviews! Anyways, knowing that the owners of Unicone use local ingredients and that their ice cream is homemade made it all the more special. It was unfortunate that I couldn't visit the interior of the shop, but it'll just have to be for next time!

==> The flavours I believe are worth trying: Ube Halaya, Fresh Figs and Yogourt, Mango Sticky Rice

==> Those that I expected more from: Gulab Jamun, Baklava

I would like to thank Sara and Yasmine for having me over.

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Me staring back at people judging me while I lick my ice cream cone