France

Paris

Can culinary authority and pastry craft translate into the world’s best ice cream?

Paris' claim on ice cream runs through pastry, not gelato: the CAP de Glacier and the Meilleur Ouvrier de France Glacier title are state-recognised credentials distinct from pâtissier, and the city's strongest current makers hold them or trained under someone who did. Emmanuel Ryon, World Pastry Champion in 1999 and MOF Glacier in 2000, built his Marais counter after years designing desserts for Café Pouchkin, Anne-Sophie Pic and the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Lionel Chauvin trained inside Berthillon, the family house his grandfather Raymond founded on Île Saint-Louis in 1954, before leaving to build Enzo & Lily on the same no-additive discipline turned toward savoury and vegetal flavours. Restaurant kitchens are a visible source of new counters too: Folderol was opened by the chef-owners of Le Rigmarole, Le Fooding's Best Restaurant of 2019. Whether that lineage produces better ice cream than an Italian gelato apprenticeship, or a Lebanese family recipe transplanted wholesale, is the open question this record is built to test, not answer.

Last checked 2026-08-21

The selected spots

6 selected

01
From Berthillon
Berthillon
ice cream · Muriel Berthillon (granddaughter of founder Raymond Berthillon), with her father Bernard Chauvin and her son Lionel Chauvin's generation historically involved before he left to found Enzo & Lily
The house that gave Paris the word for the category: opened in 1954 by a baker who reinvented himself as a glacier, still made on Île Saint-Louis by his descendants, with named ingredient sourcing and a production cap the family has kept for seventy years rather than scale past. It is also the origin point of Lionel Chauvin, whose own shop directly tests whether that training produces something different once he leaves.
02
From Une Glace à Paris
Une Glace à Paris
ice cream · Emmanuel Ryon, Meilleur Ouvrier de France Glacier (2000) and World Pastry Champion (1999), with business partner Olivier Ménard (pâtissier, formerly of Pierre Hermé and Harrods)
The clearest test case for the city's editorial question: a Meilleur Ouvrier de France Glacier and a former Pierre Hermé pâtissier, both with resumes inside starred and internationally known kitchens, building an ice cream counter explicitly framed as pastry technique applied to a frozen form. The MOF Glacier title itself is the strongest available evidence that France treats ice cream-making as a distinct, credentialed craft rather than a gelato import.
03
From Enzo & Lily
Enzo & Lily
ice cream · Lionel Chauvin, grandson of Berthillon founder Raymond Berthillon, trained in theory and practice inside Berthillon before founding his own house
The most direct test of the city's editorial question: a maker trained inside the house that made Paris synonymous with ice cream, who left specifically to take that technique somewhere Berthillon does not go — savoury, vegetal, collaborative with named craft food producers. Gault&Millau's 2026 shop guide profiles him under exactly this framing: 'As the grandson of Raymond Berthillon, Lionel Chauvin could have simply carried on the family recipes. Instead, he chose to forge his own path.'
04
From Bachir
Bachir
ice cream · Founded in Bikfaya, Lebanon in 1936 by brothers Edouard and Maurice Bachir; French operations run by GLACE BACHIR FRANCE, a separate entity created in 2016
A ninety-year-old Lebanese family ice cream house whose Paris counters draw queues on the strength of a genuinely different technique (mastic, salep) rather than a French or Italian one — a useful contrast case for a city record built around the pastry-glacier question, precisely because it does not fit that lineage at all.
05
Folderol
ice cream · Jessica Yang and Robert Compagnon, also the owners of the restaurant Le Rigmarole
A direct line from a Le Fooding Best Restaurant to an ice cream counter, run by the same chefs, with specific and unusual flavours (hojicha, soy-rapadura, coconut and melon-basil sorbets) rather than a generic seasonal menu — a second, differently shaped test of chef authority translating into ice cream.
06
Glazed
ice cream · Henri Guittet, who began with an ice cream truck before opening this shop
A self-taught, truck-to-shop trajectory rather than a pastry-school pedigree, with named organic ingredients in specific pairings and continued relevance evidenced by a 2026 brand collaboration — a useful counterweight inside the same city record to the MOF-credentialed makers.