The inside scoop: where to get Sheffield’s best ice cream
Over the moon to have been featured as one of Sheffield’s best ice cream makers by The Tribune. Extract reproduced with kind permission of The Tribune, read the full article here.
By Holly Williams • 29 July 2025
Fennell’s founder Richard started making unusual flavoured small-batch ice cream in his Park Hill home, with the aim of “making ice cream exciting again”. They can now be found at Bon and Mesters’ Market in Leah’s Yard (where I’m told sales went bananas when they went viral on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform) and at events across the city.
I catch them at Sheffield Wine Week festival, where I’m too full of wine and cheese to have more than a single scoop: the couldn’t-be-summerier fig leaf and blackberry. I love the toasty, coconutty flavour of fig leaves, which gives the ice cream a lovely pale green colour. There’s a gentle fruitiness from the blackberry, and it has a quite solid, classic ice cream texture. My other half, Tommo, opts for candied lemon peel and olive oil, which is an instant winner: the olive oil isn’t too savoury but brings a “lovely grassiness”, he says, with the sharp chewy candied peel adding welcome bite.
Fennell’s stall. Image: Holly Williams
A few weeks later, we pick up a couple of mini-pots from Mesters’ Market. I try the orange blossom caramel, which is a stunner. I know floral flavours can be divisive, but I love a Parma Violet, or rose Turkish Delight – and the orange blossom here is heavenly, beautifully delicate, and the ice cream has a particularly smooth texture. A raspberry and thyme sorbet has a proper lipsmacking sourness, and a surprisingly soft moussey texture, although it’s also a little bit ice crystally. The thyme flavour was too subtle for me, although Tommo claimed it really added something. (I suspect he’s trying to usurp me as taster-in-chief.)
Best scoop: The orange blossom caramel just pips it – 10/10
Price paid: £4 for a scoop
Novelty factor: Good luck finding a non-novel Fennell’s flavour – 10/10
Best served with: Your pretentious lover who can identify subtle tasting notes
