Oddono's, South Kensington

While on holiday in and around London a couple of weeks ago we got back into the swing of things and consumed a lot of ice cream!

The first day of the holiday saw us in Central London introducing our boys to the wonders of the Natural History Museum, during which the 2 year old learned two new words ('interesting' and 'fossils'). After a couple of hours of first week of the school holidays intensity he was exhausted and after a brief visit to the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain (lovingly nicknamed 'Diana's Pond' in our family) we headed off in search of some elusive ice cream.

We'd done a bit of a google search before going, as is our way, so as usual we were attempting to find Oddono's with the help of GPS on a phone and wandered past another gelato parlour, Scoop, which will be tried at a future date (we had to withstand the temptation of going in when we walked past on the way back to the station after visiting our actual destination!). Anyway, we eventually found this branch of Oddonos in a narrow store on Bute Street (a list of other branches can be found here). This isn't the smallest ice cream parlour we have visited on our travels, but due to the decor and lighting it did feel very tight. This feeling was enhanced by the busyness of the cafe on what was a very hot day.



Oddono's motto is 'lifes too short to taste bad ice cream' and I have to admit we were impressed. The range of ice cream was good with all the usual suspects plus a few extras. Over the years they have received lots of awards and are officially on sale in Selfridges who have extremely high standards. We choose 3 flavours - Salted caramel, cookies and a variety of chocolate. None of them disappointed with each ice cream having a good creamy texture, a noticeable flavor and a solid taste. What they missed was that little bit extra - the wow factor that would make us want to go again and again. Price wise, 3 scoops came out as £5.45 - not a bad price for the location of the store!

Sadly,although this is outside the control of the staff, our experience was marred by the rudeness of other customers. Disagreements over ice cream and toilets rather loudly, not involving us but certainly distracting when we were trying to give the parlour a fair chance. This meant that as a whole it was not the greatest experience we have had and because of this and the style of store we feel we need to give it a 2 out of 5. BUT, and it is a big BUT - we will try another branch in the future and will review it afresh to give you all a better guide.


Rating:




4 Ice cream



2 Experience