Ghirardelli’s chocolate is, no doubt, famous around the world. But, did you know that they have an ice cream parlour in San Francisco? It is their first outlet, and believe me, if you haven’t had ice cream here, you don’t know the real taste of ice cream.

ghirardelli's

Photo by: Jocelyn Hsu

I’ll share an incident with you. One sunny day, a friend of mine and I decided to go to Ghirardelli Square. To my surprise, she had never been there before in her life. I still remember the expression on her face when she took the first bite out of her butterscotch hot fudge sundae. Though the tall glass it came in was, indeed, very intimidating, but it was scraped to the bottom in no time. She was filled with a feeling of pleasure, and guilt for not coming here earlier. I’ll tell you why.

Imagine this: You take a bite out of the whipped cream on the top of the ice cream, and it melts in your mouth, as if that was where it was meant to be in the first place. The chocolate on top of the whipped cream makes you feel that whatever chocolates you ate before weren’t chocolates. It seems as if the other companies were lying to you.

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Photo courtesy of The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

Then, you take a bite out of the ice cream, and you are experiencing so many different, rich flavours at the same time. There’s butter pecan ice cream, wrapped in vanilla ice cream, butterscotch, and the richest hot fudge sauce you have tasted in your life. You forget that you’re sitting in an ice cream parlour, and start enjoying the ice cream as if you are a 5-year-old with no concern of the world around you.

You must be thinking that Ghirardelli Square must be very expensive, but in fact, it’s not. Like, their butterscotch hot fudge sundae is for $9.95. There is also a variety of beverages, and single-scoop ice creams.

Truly, Ghirardelli Square is the heaven of all ice cream parlours, and indeed the best place to experience heaven on Earth.