Ice cream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream in Lisbon, but it’s Bizzarro Gelato that will delight and confuse your tastebuds. Strawberry-Olive? Onion-Mango? Avocado-Lime? These flavors can all be yours just steps away from Praça do Comércio.
The Origins of Bizarro Gelato
Two brothers, one a pastry chef and the other a pharmacist, opened the whimsically wacky Bizzarro Gelato in January 2024, a sister shop of Echo Gelato Lab in Sesimbra, and they have been testing new flavors ever since!
One of the truly bizarre things about Bizzarro Gelato is that it doesn’t look like an ice cream shop from the outside or the inside. When you walk in, the first thing you notice isn’t the ice cream but a fascinating menagerie of hybrid animal-human portraits on the left wall along with the long metallic table running down one side of the room, making you feel as if you’re on a space mission or a cruise ship waiting to land in the next port.
People sitting down to enjoy their gelato face each other while enjoying their creative scoops, making it easy to interact with fellow gelato junkies as a mannequin wearing candy clothing hangs out in the corner.
Truly Unique Flavors
After taking in the unique interior design, you turn to your left and notice the pièce de résistance bizarre, the gelato served from a fancy cart, each flavor hidden inside metal canisters scooped out by Maria, the kind and passionate ice cream artiste.
“Do you have curiosity?” Maria asked me as I approached the cart. ‘Curiosity,’ I thought. ‘Curiosity is my middle name, Maria.’ Maria swiftly took me on a gelato journey not for the faint of heart. Trying a scoop of beet-orange first, as the flavor board promised that it would “make you fall in love again,” I hesitated, the hybrid combination not tasting too strongly of either flavor.
“Maybe this will be the one,” Maria mentioned, passing me a small spoon of strawberry-olive. ‘Interesting. More olive than strawberry but good.’
I tried the onion-mango next and smiled the moment the onion touched my tongue. The onion clearly surpassed the mango in the race for my tastebuds. The next flavor-the caramel-soy sauce-was a revelation, a more umami version of salted caramel. But – it wasn’t weird enough for me.
So, I went a step further and turned to the peanut-tomato. The tasting board’s commentary here: “Kinda obvious, huh?” Not really, if you ask me, but it turned out to be delicious and novel enough for me to make it one of the two scoops I ordered (Truffle-Lemon Cheesecake being the other).
There are 16 flavors currently available at Bizzarro Gelato and half of them are vegan. Four traditional flavors are ready to keep those who are not so sure about this whole bizzarro thing happy (drumroll please): vanilla, milk chocolate, strawberry, and pistachio.
The other 12 flavors are for the bizzarro among us, with some flavors scheduled to change every season – so if you find your favorite flavor, my advice to you is to order it as much as you can before it changes.
Continuing with the weird and the wonderful, Bizzarro Gelato also offers four different flavors of sugar cones: green apple, raspberry, vanilla, and the classic-flavored cone you can find anywhere.
If you’d like to try as many flavors as you can in one sitting, Bizzarro sells little tasting boxes with 6 or 12 tiny cups. The 6 cups are all vegan flavors while the 12-cup tasting is a mix of both.
How to Get to Bizzarro Gelato
Bizzarro Gelato is located at R. de São Julião 54 a three-minute walk from Tram 15, the 736 or 760 Bus, or the Baixa-Chiado Metro Station (Blue Line). It is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 12:00 pm to 7:30 pm. A small cup or cone with one flavor is €3.80, medium (two flavors) is €5.20, and large (three flavors) is €6.30. The 6-cup tasting menu is €7, and the 12-cup tasting menu is €10. Take-away is also available.
So, only one question remains: do you have the curiosity to try Bizzarro Gelato? Which flavor will you try first?
