Cherry on Top: gelato that stays open as late as Ossington does

Ossington has plenty of places to start an evening, and far fewer places to end one. Cherry on Top, a gelato shop and café that opened in mid-July at Dundas and Ossington, was built for that second half of the night: the counter serves until 10 pm early in the week and 11 pm from Thursday to Saturday, and the line at the door after dinner suggests the neighborhood had been waiting for it.

“An extension of your Ossington experience”

The team behind the counter comes from the marketing world, one side graphic design, the other business, and it shows in everything from the cherry-red branding to the way the room is lit. The idea was a gelato shop designed like a place to linger. “We wanted to create a space that had a very inviting and warm atmosphere,” says one of the co-owners, describing the shop as “an extension of your Ossington experience” where a date or a group of friends can land after dinner. There is plenty of seating, including a cozy back room with dim lighting, and by day the tables fill up with laptops and morning croissants.

A rice milk base that lets the flavors speak

The gelato itself is the quiet surprise. Everything in the case, gelato and sorbet alike, is made in-house, entirely vegan and gluten-free, with no artificial flavors or colors and most ingredients imported from Italy. Instead of the cashew or coconut bases common elsewhere in the city, the base is built on rice milk, chosen for its neutrality: the flavors carry without the heaviness. It works. Hazelnut, run through with a ripple of Italian vegan hazelnut-chocolate spread, and pistachio are among the top sellers, alongside the cherry amarena, a vanilla base laced with sour cherry and shards of dark chocolate. The sorbets follow the seasons, spun from real fruit: melon, mixed berries and lemon this summer. The espresso flavor gets an extra push from a cold brew infusion made with Rufino coffee. For one of the owners, who is herself gluten- and dairy-free, tasting a vegan hazelnut gelato for the first time was part of the point; for the other, it goes back further. “When I eat gelato, I remember just being happy as a child,” she says of her trips to Italy, where the whole idea was born.

Cherry matcha and made-to-order Italian sodas

The café side holds its own, open from 9 am daily with pastries from Petite Thuet, Tori’s Bakeshop and neighboring Dear Grain, plus made-to-order Italian sodas built on imported syrups, from cherry lemon to elderflower pomegranate to orzata. Matcha gets the house treatment too, with a signature cherry matcha in place of the usual strawberry.

Wine and gelato pairings on the horizon

The cherry lemon soda proved so popular it is being reborn as a sorbet in September, and a wine program arrives this fall, with flights and wine-and-gelato pairings that lean into the shop’s European late-night ambitions. A pint freezer covers takeout cravings, and the shop lands on Uber Eats on August 25. Five weeks in, Cherry on Top already feels less like a scoop counter than a place the neighborhood ends its nights.

Written by Daniel Neuhaus
Photography by Daniel Neuhaus

Updated on August 25, 2026

Make a suggestion