Death In Venice Gelato

A cheeseboard — brie, white wine, pears, honey, berry jam — is not where most frozen dessert begins. At Death In Venice, it is a signature. The Cheeseboard Gelato that carried this shop to a North American Gelato Cup comes from the same rotating case as a Ricotta Rosemary Lemon pint and a Mexican spiced chocolate built on twenty-seven ingredients, two spice infusions and six kinds of chilli. This is a counter that treats a pint the way a kitchen treats a plate, and the flavour board is the whole argument.

The pints reward reading closely. Coffee gelato is built by infusing crushed Propeller Coffee beans in milk before the espresso goes in; the matcha pint uses ceremonial-grade leaves from Pluck Tea, set against white chocolate and vanilla. Bourbon and Smoked Chocolate starts with dark chocolate that is smoked and cooked with bourbon before any cream arrives. A butter-tart gelato layers maple, smoked pecans and white-chocolate caramel, and a pistachio pint carries water buffalo yogurt, orange blossom and rose. Elsewhere the board runs more familiar but never plain — Nutella and cookies studded with chocolate bits, a peanut-butter-and-jam pint scattered with toasted croissant, vanilla bean sweetened with local buckwheat honey. Ingredients are named and sourced with intent, down to a limited pint of Tuscan olive oil finished with sea salt. Nothing here is flavoured from a bottle.

The dairy-free range is not a token shelf; it is a second argument running alongside the first. Coconut and Pandan was developed with Chef Nuit of the Pai restaurants, blended with pandan leaves for a Thai read. A blackberry Earl Grey sorbetto is steeped with Sloane tea leaves and foraged fruit; a blueberry-lavender-lemonade pint draws on wild Quebec blueberries and lavender from a farm in Milton. Strawberry-basil-lemon and raspberry-ginger-lime sorbets read as composed rather than substituted. A guest eating without dairy gives up none of the shop's range or ambition.

The format follows from the method. The storefront runs as a small gelato lab, turning out sixteen rotating flavours the shop promotes as a daily lineup. A booked tasting tour walks guests through the science behind them — how the dark chocolate is smoked, how the spice infusions are layered, why a savoury pint still eats like dessert. The experience is framed as a sixteen-course tasting built around gelato science, not a quick scoop. Pints land around twelve dollars, premium for frozen dessert and easy to justify once the recipe work behind each one is on the table.

Behind the lab is Kaya Ogruce, a chemical engineer who turned the discipline toward frozen dessert and now runs the counter as owner and gelato maker. The engineering shows in the technique, and local reporting has followed the lab-style process closely. The Ricotta Rosemary Lemon traces to a 2016 Chopped Canada win; the Cheeseboard carried Ogruce to the 2019 North American Gelato Cup. Collaborations with Chef Nuit brought the coconut-pandan and a Thai iced tea gelato onto the board — guest work that keeps the rotation from ever quite settling.

The best way in is to treat the counter like a flight. Start with Ricotta Rosemary Lemon for the clearest read on the house, pivot through Cheeseboard for the savoury-sweet turn, and finish on the Mexican spiced chocolate for the darkest, hottest end of the board; build a set around coconut-pandan and the berry sorbets and a dairy-free table gives up nothing. On a stretch of Dundas West thick with places to eat, in the heart of Little Portugal, Death In Venice holds its ground by making the frozen case the most curious thing on the block.