Anabelle Berkani: The Creative Force Behind Iconoglace
A summer fixture, the Iconoglace shops on Bélanger, Laurier and Le Quartier des spectacles draw crowds from noon until closing. Behind this one-of-a-kind dairy bar is an artist with more than one talent. No wonder the ice cream looks as good as it tastes.
Anabelle Berkani is an image specialist, an assistant director, to be exact. She spent more than 20 years on every kind of set, from big American productions like the X-Men series to advertising. “Advertising isn’t a world everyone loves, but I found people I liked working with,” she says. “It’s very meticulous work, a bit like Iconoglace. I want the slice of cake placed a certain way. I even send my staff videos to show them how to build the new sundaes.”
An Assistant Director’s Eye, Now Trained on Sundaes
That advertising background clearly left its mark on Anabelle, enough to be part of what made her dairy bars work. As she points out, yes, her frozen creations land on Instagram fast. But customers come back. Which tells you the look is only one ingredient in the recipe.
From the start, her love of cooking was the foundation of the business. It was also what made the leap into food service complicated. “I clearly didn’t want to be open year-round,” she says. “My father had a restaurant, so I turned to ice cream pretty quickly.”
Inspired by her many trips abroad, she realized Montreal was missing the homemade dairy bar feel. “We were good at ice cream, but the sundae, the banana split, all of that was missing,” she adds.
Before she even learned to make ice cream, she took over her first space, the former Chez Rachid creamery on Beaubien, where the original Iconoglace now stands. At that stage, the goal was mostly to learn how to run a business. “After that, I took ice cream making courses in Guelph, Ontario, and in Wisconsin,” she explains. “But what I really wanted was to make vegan soft serve. I could see there was a market for it, but it had to be good. In the courses, though, they’re behind on that. They’re really attached to dairy.”
Vegan Soft Serve That Won Over the Skeptics
The day Anabelle pulled her first vegan raspberry ice cream, alone in the kitchen, the response was instant. Judging by the steady lineups, word of mouth did its work, precisely because it tastes good. And the people lining up for Iconoglace’s vegan scoops aren’t all vegan. So much so that today, vegan soft serve makes up half the company’s total volume. Half. To keep up with the growing demand, 25 people now rotate through each location, running the dairy bar at full tilt from spring through fall.
During tourist season, it isn’t only Montrealers cashing in. “We get a lot, a lot of American customers,” Anabelle notes. “And here’s something interesting: in Mile End, on Laurier, we sell twice as much hard ice cream to please the French, whether tourists or Plateau locals, than we do on Bélanger.” Proof that the iconoclastic streak in Iconoglace doesn’t upend every tradition. One thing is certain, it makes one of summer’s great pleasures that much more satisfying for everyone. And fans will be glad to hear a third location is slated for spring 2026.
Written by Jean-Philippe Tastet
Photography by Alison Slattery
