Terre Adélice: Ice cream in Lyon

Have you ever had poppy ice cream?  Or pine nut or verbena ice cream, or Jura “vin jaune” sorbet?  We stopped by an ice cream shop in Lyon that had all of these, plus every other flavor you could imagine, from the classics (Valrhona chocolate, raspberry, hazelnut) to the exotic (wasabi, goji-passionfruit, lavender) to the completely out-there (green Chartreuse, foie gras, Roquefort).

When I was researching restaurants in Lyon, I noticed something odd about one of the top ten restaurants on Trip Advisor – it wasn’t actually a restaurant, but rather an ice cream shop, Terre Adélice.

The Terre Adélice menu lists nearly 150 flavors, so it was a challenge to narrow them down. I ended up choosing fraise de bois (wild strawberry), mint leaf, and Poire William Ardèche (Bartlett pear).  My aunt picked Arabica coffee ice cream.

The coffee and the mint were our favorites by far – the coffee ice cream was more intensely flavored than any cup of coffee could ever be, while the mint was as bright and fresh as newly torn mint leaves.  The pear, meanwhile, tasted exactly like a ripe pear (what more can you ask?), and the strawberry was a straightforward, sweet treat.

We initially walked by on a Saturday afternoon, and the shop was packed inside and out; fortunately, on our return on Tuesday we easily got a table outside.  It’s a lovely spot in the old part of the city, Vieux Lyon, perfect for people watching while eating your ice cream.  Trip Advisor was right!