Barbra Austin

For those of you love ice cream as much as I do but are disheartened by the cold, or for those readers who simply wish to raise their cholesterol level, I’ve found a solution.

Moms and their mini-mes, mademoiselles in maxi dresses and men in man-pris, all with milky relief in mind on muggy, meridional days are making a made dash to visit Mary, the newly-minted gelato maven of the Marais.

Now that summer is upon us, I thought I’d round up my favorite addresses for ice cream and sorbet in Paris.

La Dolce Vita, indeed.

Since 1982, Le Bac à Glaces has been churning all-natural, nothing-artificial-added sorbets and ice creams.

I love strolling aimlessly around Paris, particularly on a day as beautiful as yesterday. But sometimes even I need a little direction in life, a goal, an endpoint, something to aspire to. Yesterday I set my sights on 47 rue des Martyrs, the address of a glacier called Caramella.

“Accro” means “hooked” or “addicted” in French. I am accro à several things: My morning coffee, the game Wordtwist (You are going down, Joe!), Advil PM, and now, pistachio ice cream with calissons from À La Mère de Famille.

The bad news is that it’s really, really hot in Paris right now. The good news is that it doesn’t get dark until 10:30, so that when things start cooling off in the evening there’s still plenty of light left.

Not that Paris isn’t beautiful in the dark…

This has to be one of the most useful signposts in all of Rome, communicating two things every tourist needs to know: How to get to the airport and how to get to the gelato.

Though it was the first thing I thought of when I saw it, this is not a fancy dish of mashed potatoes, scooped up cafeteria-style with a big well in the middle for gravy. No, it’s giant portion of fior di latte gelato, ready to be drowned in espresso and turned into one of my favorite treats: Caffé affogato.