Artisanal Gelato
Near Soho.

Soho is one of the most densely packed food destinations in Europe. Its streets contain everything from Michelin-starred restaurants to late-night ramen bars, independent coffee shops, and some of the city's finest wine bars. What Soho lacks — despite all of this abundance — is a genuinely great gelateria. For that, you need to walk five minutes east.

Gelatone is located on Rose Street in Covent Garden — close enough to Soho to make it a natural extension of any evening or afternoon in the West End, but removed enough from the tourist thoroughfares to feel like a proper neighbourhood find. The walk takes you through some of the most characterful streets in central London: through the edges of Seven Dials, past the independent shops of Long Acre, and into the quieter lanes surrounding the Covent Garden piazza.

Most gelato sold in London — including in Soho — is made from industrial paste bases. The flavouring is added to a neutral dairy mix; the result is sweet, recognisable, and largely the same regardless of the brand. This is not gelato in the traditional sense. It is a product optimised for scale and margin, not for taste.

At Gelatone, every flavour begins with the ingredient itself. Our pistachios come from the slopes of Mount Etna in Bronte, Sicily — a specific designation of origin, not a commodity purchase. Our hazelnuts are sourced from Piedmont. Our milk is from a single Somerset farm. Nothing enters the kitchen anonymously.

We make everything fresh each morning and serve it the same day. The menu is deliberately small — rarely more than ten flavours at a time. Each one is made to be consumed at its best, not to be stored or transported. This is as close as you can get to standing in a gelateria in Palermo or Bologna, without leaving London.

If you are in Soho — whether for dinner, drinks, theatre, or a Saturday afternoon — Gelatone fits naturally into the itinerary. From Old Compton Street, you walk east along Shaftesbury Avenue, cut through the Earlham Street market, and arrive at Rose Street in under ten minutes. From Carnaby Street or Regent Street, you approach through Seven Dials, which is arguably even more pleasant. From Leicester Square, it is four minutes on foot.

Many of our regulars are people who live or work in Soho and have made Gelatone a fixed point in their week. The commute has become part of the ritual: the walk itself clears the head, and what waits at the end justifies the detour.

If you are visiting for the first time, start with the Pistacchio di Bronte. It is the clearest expression of what makes Gelatone different: a flavour so direct and precise that it requires no embellishment. The colour is naturally muted — a pale, dusty green — because it contains no added colouring. The taste is intense, slightly savoury, and nothing like the bright green pistachio products common elsewhere in London.

Our seasonal sorbets are also worth noting — particularly the citrus varieties in winter and the stone fruit flavours in summer. They are dairy-free and suitable for vegans, and they demonstrate how much flavour is achievable with nothing more than great fruit, water, and discipline.