Three To Try: Melbourne’s Best New Gelato and Ice-Cream Shops Are Scooping Asian-Inspired Flavours

Kōri, Hawthorn
“Japanese-inspired, Melbourne-bred” is the tagline for new coral-coloured ice-creamery Kōri. It arrived in Hawthorn in August and already it’s hitting the sweet spot. “We definitely underestimated how busy we were going to be,” says ex-Coda chef Joane Yeoh, who owns the business with Bernard Chu, co-founder of South Yarra patisserie Luxbite. “We try to keep up with the consistency and quality [but] we don’t want people queuing for long.” Here you’ll find 24 ice-cream flavours – including eight vegan options. Some of the most popular include matcha (and matcha pistachio) and strawberry shortcake. Or you can venture into more savoury territory with flavours like miso, black sesame, dassai sake and sweet potato kuromitsu (a Japanese sugar syrup similar to molasses). Yeoh’s number-one, though, is the fuji apple sorbet.

Kariton Sorbetes, CBD (and Footscray)
Just eight months after parking the proverbial kariton (Filipino street-food ice-cream cart) and opening a bricks-and-mortar shop in Footscray, Kariton Sorbetes has expanded with a new gelato store on Russell Street in the CBD. It’s a futuristic flagship for former Lume and Sunda chef John Rivera and former Maha pastry chef Minh Duong, who first launched Kariton as a takeaway service in 2020 – with the goal of becoming “the Asian Messina”. Here, find all the popular flavours – like ube (purple yam), mango float and champorado (rice pudding) – in scoops, tubs or pillowy bread buns. Plus, taho soft-serve (silken-tofu-flavoured ice-cream topped with soy-milk panna cotta, boba pearls and oolong tea syrup), and rotating slushies that are exclusive to Chinatown (like the Sarsi Spida – sarsaparilla slushie with tonka bean milk foam). The Filipino-inspired menu is projected onto the curved, sky-blue ceiling.

Hareruya Pantry, Carlton
“It sounds like hallelujah, but in Japanese it means ‘sunny shop’,” says Kantaro Okada of Hareruya Pantry, his perfectly named, sun-drenched eatery – a new addition to Carlton. Behind a red-brick frontage (and roller door), it looks out onto the playground in Lincoln Square, which is exactly where Okada (who’s also behind the upstairs Leonie, and cafes Le Bajo and 279) imagined his customers perching with jam-packed bento boxes, baked goods and gelato. Gelato-wise, there are around eight flavours available to take away in a cup or tub, wrapped in mochi in daifuku style, or sandwiched by rice wafers in monaka style. The offering is focused on Japanese flavours; you might find matcha, Calpis (an uncarbonated soft drink) and yuzu, and avocado yoghurt, made by chef Ayano Suzuki.

Additional reporting by Emily Holgate, Chynna Santos and James Williams.