Fusco’s Ice Cream Parlour

This place brings back fond memories of childhood! I still get excited about getting a fuscos with my best friends! Lovely ice cream! Everyone should go!

Driving up and down this road on a daily basis i have always overlooked this ice cream shop. It looks rather small from the outside but when you enter it is quite spacious with a small seating area and PLENTY to choose from.
The menu ranges from fresh homemade ice cream (one of the favourites being oreo choc chip) to candy floss to Jamaican coffee. It is great for both little kids and big kids as who doesn’t love a bag of candy floss or a 30 inch cup filled with slush!
The prices are quite reasonable and the portion sizes are massive! So if your ever along the Woodstock road and fancy something sweet why not pop in here!

I love this ice cream parlour, and have done since I was a child! They aren’t so much about having a load of fancy flavours and so on, but rather just make pure, delicious ice cream that tastes out of this world. You can get tubs and cones and there are different toppings and sauces to choose from. You even get giant family sized tubs. They also serve sundaes and banana splits and similar desserts. My favourite way of having it is simply to get a tub of vanilla ice cream with a bit of sauce on it, it’s so nice that it doesn’t need all the extras! The only thing I would say is that the ice cream just isn’t as good once you put it in your freezer — it goes quite hard and isn’t as tasty anymore, though of course you could let it thaw out for a bit before eating.

Just around the corner from my house, I knew I had to try Fusco’s after all the rave reviews I had heard. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the sunshine to come out and give me an excuse to enjoy some ice-​creamy goodness. I mean you just look mental if you eat ice-​cream in the cold, right?
After sampling the dee-​lites of Italian gellati’s last summer, me oh my, they are a thing of wonder. Fusco’s don’t really have any exotic flavours, they’re more about the classic flavours– like vanilla, choc-​chip, honeycomb and the yummy mint choc-​chip (my favourite). They have all manner of sprinkles and marshmallows to adorn these scrumptious flavours.
A pretty yummy experience, but not sure if Fusco’s is living up to the hype.

When I came across Fusco’s Ice Cream parlour I expected to see all sort of different flavours but in fact all the ice creams is vanilla in cones and tubs with various embellishments with jelly, chocolate, fruit, marshmallow etc. I just had vanilla cone with lemon syrup — fairly plain but delicous on a sunny day and though it tasted good the ice cream was a bit too soft.
It’s very small with just a few stools to sit on inside with a couple of tables outside.
They also have things like rhubarb pie to eat, with tea and coffee — but Nescafe only — so no pretence here, you know what you’re getting!
Fusco’s is a great place to bring children and a good stopping off place on the way back up the Woodstock Road. A nice change from cafes, but maybe not

I last tried the ice cream from here about a year ago on the way home from a first aid course with my friend Dougie who raved about the ice cream from here, so as an ice cream enthusiast, I was really looking forward to it!
I have to say I was disappointed. I always feel the test of a good ice cream place is the quality of their vanilla, as other flavours are similar elsewhere: it is the vanilla that is the usual hallmark of quality, so that is what I got. It was distinctly average. The flavour wasn’t very distinct and it was overly frozen which didn’t make for a good N-​ice experience (if you excuse the pun)!
I like the ability to sit in store which would be great if you were calling in on the way by on a nice walk or something, but I imagine the vast majority would want to take away. I am willing to give it a try again in another flavour because I am a sucker for sugar, but I am sad to report I cant agree with the great reputation this place has with people in and around Belfast.

You must, must, must try this ice-​cream. Seriously. Died-​and-​gone-​to-​heaven just doesn’t cut it.
Rainy Monday (double disaster) doesn’t seem like a recipe for ice-​cream, but believe you me, any form of comfort food on this particular Monday was most welcome. A quick dive into Fusco’s (out of the pouring rain), was going to be an even greater remedy than I could possibly have imagined…
It’s not much to look at (don’t judge a book by its cover, eh?), and it’s not like traditional ice cream parlours where you can see the different flavours of ice-​cream, so I wasn’t even sure what they offered. The various menus informed me that they offered apple and rhubarb pie, different ice-​cream treats and the regular tubs /​cones in honeycomb and vanilla. Mmmm…
My sister went for a small honeycomb tub with chocolate sauce, which at 75p was 15p more expensive than vanilla, but still very reasonable I thought. I, on the other hand, opted for a vanilla 99, also with chocolate sauce. Mutters of «mmmm» and «oooh, this is good», amidst the crunches and licks reflected my sister’s views on the matter, and my ten minute silence was enough to verify that this was indeed the best ice-​cream I had ever tasted. And I’m not even a huge vanilla fan!
Tummies filled to the brim, the two of us went on our way, knowing that we had tasted a little bit of heaven. Oooh the cheese… chocolate sauce with that?

Fusco’s is a gem, a little diamond in the, slightly, rough. It’s an ice cream parlour on the Cregagh/​Howard Road area of East Belfast. But more importantly, it’s an ice cream is out-​flipping-​standing!
OK so there isn’t much variety, but when your ice cream is that yummy, there’s no need! Vanilla is standard, but here, vanilla is something else!
Fusco’s has a sit-​in or takeaway set up. But inside isn’t the prettiest, so I’d recommend taking away.
There are other sweet treats to be had such as apple pie, popcorn, candy and tea and coffee for the grownups.
I bought a small 99 cone (an ice-​cream with a flake) with raspberry sauce for £1.25. Maybe it’s a little more than I’d hope to pay for a 99, but I don’t regret it one bit… what I do regret is foolishly dropping the flake onto the ground outside. Boohoo!

Yum yummy in my tummy. I think I will have those words engraved as my epitaph when I finally kick the bucket. I love my grub I really do. And while I have some favourites, ice-​cream actually isn’t one of them. I’m one of the founder members of the Sensitive Tooth Foundation — ouch, ice-​cream can really hurt. But sometimes you have to be a little masochistic when it comes to food because although it hurts the hell out of my teeth, Fusco’s Ice-​Cream is absolutely gorgeous. It’s creamy and the flavours are lovely, my preferred one being chocolate of course — how can any woman worth her salt choose otherwise? The service in here is friendly and courteous and it’s reasonably priced too. Pop in here for a cone sometime, you’ll thank me.