1. Gold Coast Chocolate - Serendipity Ice Cream

Courtesy of blogs.riverfronttimes.com

The progenitor of this group is Serendipity Ice Cream. Owner Beckie Jacobs supplies customers and plenty of better restaurants around town. While the new flavors like cotton candy (candy floss to non-Americans) and chocolate orange tickle us, she really made star status locally when she re-created Gold Coast Chocolate, a long-gone deep, dark chocolate that the boomer generation remembers from a now-gone St. Louis mini-chain called Velvet Freeze. 

2. Berries and Cream - Ices Plain & Fancy

Courtesy of Ann Lemons Pollack

The most remarkable execution of next-gen ice cream in these parts has to come from Ices Plain & Fancy. It's a storefront in a residential neighborhood, making most of its ice cream right in front of the customer. They use liquid nitrogen, KitchenAid mixers and blowtorches to create a dense, creamy mixture that's unlike anything else around. It's Ferran Adria crossed, almost literally, with a Victorian London cooking school - see the wall decorations. Berries and cream are topped with a berry coulis, fresh fruit, frozen pomegranate seeds and a rosette of fruit-flavored whipped cream. For the over-21 crowd, there's Dickel whiskey and pralines partying together. Theirs is an unusually flavorful waffle cone, too.

3. Ice Cream - Clementine's Naughty and Nice Creamery

Courtesy of Ann Lemons Pollack

Tucked back into a building in the historic neighborhood of Lafayette Square, Clementine's Naughty and Nice Creamery describes itself as a microcreamery. All-natural ingredients, including lots of local providers like Perennial Ales and Whisk Bakeshop, star here. The naughty part of their name includes ice creams like salted pecan maple bourbon, an absolute winner, and banana rum, which should be paired up with the chocolate stout to achieve near-nirvana. Lemongrass coconut? Gingerbread Love? Right here, or at least part of the rotation of their non-alcoholic flavors. The shop is tiny, but there's a small patio alongside.

4. Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream - Gelateria del Leone

Courtesy of Ann Lemons Pollack

Very close to an authentic Italian coffee house is Gelateria del Leone. There's more than gelato here, with baked goods, coffee and light meals, all made in-house. (Here's your chance to try St. Louis' signature gooey butter cake). The gelato is dense and flavorful, with lots of fruit flavors and nuts, too, like pistachio and hazelnut. Consider as well, London Fog, flavored with bergamot and vanilla, a creamy trip to the tropics, and the amazing vegan chocolate, dark and seductive even to omnivores like us. There's a courtyard in the back, arm chairs, wi-fi, and sidewalk tables, too. Just right in this busy neighborhood of multi-ethnic restaurants and shops.

5. Paletas - Neveria La Vallesana

Courtesy of Ann Lemons Pollack

And of course, everything old is new again. We've got housemade paletas, the Mexican version of frozen ice pops, at Neveria la Vallesana on Cherokee Street, where they're surrounded by Mexican stores and other restaurants. Both the simple, like coconut with chunks of coconut meat in it, and the more exotic, like mango chile, seduce. Ice cream by the scoop, too, in flavors both simple and striking, like rice (we haven't seen that since a trip to Florence). There's a restaurant here as well, but you can find the ice cream counters at the very front of the store.

6. Ice Cream - I Scream Cakes

On a block reminiscent of London's Shoreditch, I Scream Cakes sells mainly ice cream. A tiny storefront, idiosyncratic and fun, there's not such a thing as plain vanilla on most days. Does owner Kerry Soraci - you'll know her by the multi-colored hair - take food as art seriously? Yes, but not to the point of grimness. Several flavors lean toward spiciness like pineapple- jalapeno and mango-sriracha. One with Chinese five-spice porter, sourced from a micro-brewery across the street, and chips of toasted coconut is amazing, especially when paired with a wee bit of habanero-orange chocolate. See the Facebook page for examples of their cake art, which are not found at Martha-Stewart-type weddings.