Our story The work behind every scoop

Thousands of years before the word gelato found its first syllable in Italy, something was already being scooped in the bazaars of Isfahan and Shiraz, something that cooled the air and softened the senses. Bastani, they called it: saffron, rose water and crushed pistachio, made by hands that knew flavour is never invented, only inherited.

That inheritance is the foundation of Parlion. Not folklore, not decoration: the benchmark. Saffron from the highlands of Iran, picked in the hour before sunrise, when the flower still carries its full weight. Rose water that is still genuinely rose water, distilled from fields that have breathed the same scent for generations. Pistachio that does not enter the kitchen until colour, calibre and flavour ring true as a chord.

What holds for the Persian ingredients holds for everything that comes through our door. The craft in our atelier sets the technique: the slow maturing, the exact balance of fat, sugar and air, the art of bringing texture and taste together so they carry one another instead of competing. Belgian chocolate provides the depth. Bourbon vanilla from Madagascar the purity. I.G.P.-certified hazelnuts from Piedmont the strength. Strawberries are worked the moment they have most to give, mango when the sun has reached all the way to the stone, lime that cuts clean through the sweetness. No ingredient arrives here by chance. Each one has earned its place.

The result is a menu where every flavour carries its own story. Dark chocolate above eighty percent cacao, so deep it almost resists the tongue. Yoghurt so clean that guests return months later for that one scoop. Sorbets of pure fruit, made the way the fruit itself asks for.

Beside the ice cream stands the Parlion waffle. The base is our own vegan batter, prepared fresh in the atelier every morning: light, crisp, and built from ingredients that pass every test. On top comes melted Belgian chocolate, fresh strawberries, ripe banana, crunchy Lotus Biscoff or pieces of Kinder Bueno®. Every waffle is finished at the moment it is served, never made in advance. Together with a scoop of Parlion ice cream it becomes something you do not consume but experience.

In 2021 the doors opened on Wijngaardstraat in Antwerp. Our own atelier, where the flavours change with the season but the standard never does.

Parlion’s guests are connoisseurs. That is no accident: it is the reason this work exists. Every flavour is tested, refined, tested again, and only approved once the password is right.

Unaware until that first lick. As if the right password unlocks your finest memories and soothes the nerves.

Mmmm…