The 100 Best Dessert Shops in the World

A dessert-only tasting menu tucked inside Pullman Market, where phones stay pocketed all night by house rule. The multicourse format chases four flavor arcs, acid through sweet, and the kitchen rarely repeats itself season to season. Cotton candy spun tableside and caviar on cheese crackers give you a sense of the register. The chefs narrate as they go, which helps. A Michelin star, and a James Beard nominee for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker · Tavel Bristol-Joseph
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The quinoa-chickpea-walnut burger that made Brooks Headley famous is still on the menu at this vegetarian burger shop in the East Village, now in a bigger room with vintage diner bones. Nothing here pretends to be meat, which turns out to be the whole point. The Michelin Bib Gourmand and a New York Times top-100 spot follow naturally from cooking that treats bold seasoning and smart texture as the actual job. Save room for dessert; Headley came up as a pastry chef.

1. Eater The All-Time Eater 38
2. The New York Times 2015 · 3 stars, Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review
3. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A single, gigantic pancake made with locally ground cornmeal, mochi rice, and farmers' market fruit tells you most of what you need to know about this all-day cafe in Alhambra. The chef puts that same deliberate care into dinner, where a feast builds easily alongside sake and a wine list that somehow doesn't look like every other restaurant's wine list. Named to the New York Times' 25 best LA restaurants and a James Beard semifinalist.

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A dessert course built entirely around fruit the chef sources himself, traveling farm to farm across Japan as seasons shift. Yama is a creative tasting restaurant in Shirokane where citrus gives way to peach, then fig, then chestnut, each plate varying temperature, texture, and fragrance in ways that make a mango feel like an argument. It holds a Michelin star, which feels appropriate for a place that treats sweetness as a serious subject.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

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1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

The malai rigatoni, ridged noodles in a creamy tomato masala, is what half the room orders without looking at the menu. Pijja Palace is a full-on Indian sports bar doing bar pies, hot wings, and dosa-battered onion rings from a ground-floor spot in a Silver Lake Comfort Inn, which sounds like a bit, but isn't. The crowd is loud, the games are on, and the cardamom soft serve closes things out. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant.

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1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Eater Best New Restaurant
2. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
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1. Midwest Living 2023 · Best of the Midwest
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1. Portland Press Herald Best 75 places to eat and drink in Greater Portland
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker · Brant Dadaleares

1. 50 Top Italy #1 · The Best Pralines
2. 50 Top Italy #2 · The Best Chocolate Desserts

A four-hectare farm in the Cilento hills supplies most of what this artisan pastry shop turns into chocolate. The team grows their own ingredients, then sources obsessively for the rest, blending cacao into pralines perfumed with mountain oregano or wild violets steeped in cream. The panettone ferments in three stages and lands fragrant and barely sweet. Ranked among Italy's top praline makers by 50 Top Italy, which also named it Pastry Shop of the Year.

1. 50 Top Italy 2026 · Pastry Shop of the Year
2. 50 Top Italy #3 · The Best Pralines

1. AAA Approved
2. St. Louis Magazine Pineapple Inside-Out Cake in a Cup · Where to find the best ice cream, frozen custard, snow cones, and more in St. Louis

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Houstonia Best Ice Cream Shops in Houston
2. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream Shops In Houston

A converted ice cream truck that traded wheels for a walk-up window on Washington Avenue, this scoop shop keeps a short, rotating roster of flavors that leans well past vanilla, think black sesame, cookie butter, and vegan mango sticky rice. The Dough Boy, a scoop pressed between a warm powdered-sugar doughnut, is the order that ends up in everyone's photos. Call ahead to confirm your flavor is in stock, or risk making choices you weren't prepared for.

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2. Houstonia Best Ice Cream Shops in Houston

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2. Houstonia Best Ice Cream Shops in Houston

An ice cream shop that partners with local breweries and roasters to build flavors you won't find in a freezer aisle, Fat Cat Creamery scoops things like milk chocolate stout made with a local oatmeal stout and a cold brew cream tied to a specific Houston roaster's seasonal batch. One brick-and-mortar location in the city, plus a spot at Hobby Airport, with scoops popping up at bars and coffee shops around town.

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Flower & Cream is a modern ice cream shop on West Holcombe where pink is less a color scheme than a commitment, right down to the waffle cones. About fifteen flavors rotate through the case, including a few vegan ones with names like unicorn tracks. Half scoops are allowed, which is how undecided people get two flavors without the guilt of a second full scoop. Expect strollers, sugar, and a lot of photos of cones.

1. Houstonia Best Ice Cream Shops in Houston
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1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Houstonia Best Ice Cream Shops in Houston
2. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream Shops In Houston

The pandan-and-chrysanthemum swirl was added hesitantly and sold out immediately, which tells you most of what you need to know about this ice cream shop. Milk + Sugar keeps 16 flavors in rotation, built around a simple premise: take desserts people already love and churn them into scoops. The brown sugar waffle cone is worth the upgrade. Additional locations in the Heights and West University.

1. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream Shops In Houston
2. Houstonia Best Ice Cream Shops in Houston

1. Houstonia Best Ice Cream Shops in Houston
2. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream Shops In Houston

Tiny's is an ice cream shack with a seaside look that somehow got built in the middle of Houston, nowhere near any sea. The line runs long and heavy with strollers until about 4:30, when everyone leaves for dinner. The metal benches outside turn into griddles in summer, so plan to walk with your cone. The namesake flavor comes with freshly baked cookies blended in, and the pistachio neapolitan covers three flavors at once.

1. Houstonia Best Ice Cream Shops in Houston
2. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream Shops In Houston

1. Houstonia Best Ice Cream Shops in Houston
2. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream Shops In Houston

The pressed-tin ceiling and apothecary cases are original to the old drugstore this soda fountain has been around forever inside. It's the kind of Carroll Gardens spot that puts potato chips on a sundae and makes it feel obvious in retrospect. Ice cream floats run on housemade soda, and the sundaes come loaded with toppings, most made in-house. Order at the counter and find a stool; nobody here is in a hurry.

1. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream In NYC
2. Eater Essential Ice Cream Shops in New York City

1. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream In NYC
2. Eater Essential Ice Cream Shops in New York City

1. Chinese Restaurant Awards Top 50 Honourees · Elite 30 Canada

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2. Eater Essential Ice Cream Shops in New York City

1. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream In NYC
2. Eater Essential Ice Cream Shops in New York City

1. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream In NYC
2. Eater Essential Ice Cream Shops in New York City

A pastry counter on Via Toledo that runs continuous production of sfogliatelle and babà so there's always something coming out warm. The point is freshness, and regulars know it: you grab one to eat while walking back from Piazza del Plebiscito, not to save for later. The babà ranks among the top ten in the country on the 50 Top Italy list. Caprese cakes and cassate fill out the case for anyone who needs a second reason to stop.

1. 50 Top Italy #5 · The Best Sfogliatelle
2. 50 Top Italy #8 · The Best Babà

1. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream In NYC
2. Eater Essential Ice Cream Shops in New York City

1. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream In NYC
2. Eater Essential Ice Cream Shops in New York City

1. The Infatuation The Best Ice Cream In NYC
2. Eater Essential Ice Cream Shops in New York City

A pastry counter and cafe on the Mergellina waterfront, where the sfogliatelle come out of the oven in a near-constant rotation, the shell-shaped riccia crackling at first bite, the softer frolla close behind. Babà and torta caprese round out the case. Generations of Neapolitans have been picking up a box here before a journey, which explains the second outpost at Napoli Centrale, platform 23, for those cutting it close.

1. 50 Top Italy #8 · The Best Sfogliatelle

1. 50 Top Italy #3 · The Best Chocolate Desserts

1. 50 Top Italy #7 · The Best Pralines

1. 50 Top Italy #8 · The Best Tiramisù

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A chocolate shop that has been passing the same craft down through six generations, Maglio is the kind of family operation where the institutional knowledge is genuinely staggering. Fruit pralines, chocolate tablets in a range of flavors, gelées, and preserves fill the shelves in a small city in the Salento heel of Puglia. It landed at number ten on 50 Top Italy's praline list, which feels about right for a place this serious about chocolate.

1. 50 Top Italy #10 · The Best Pralines

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

This is a gelato shop on East Coast Road where the thyme waffle cone smells so much like focaccia that you may briefly wonder about your priorities. The flavors marry Southeast Asian ingredients to familiar ones, so lemongrass Earl Grey and caramel pandan sit beside raspberry lychee. Expect a line of locals and tourists, all sweating politely, since Singapore's humidity makes a scoop feel like infrastructure.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
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A dessert tasting counter in Minamiaoyama where every course is built around fruit the chef sourced herself, traveling Japan's farms until something moved her enough to bring it back. She thinks hard about how each piece is cut and at what temperature it meets you. Producers are named on the menu, which feels less like a credit line and more like a guest list. Vegetable and cacao courses run between the fruit, and drink pairings are chosen to stretch the finish.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The entrance is a walk-in freezer at the back of a Downtown ice cream shop, which is the kind of plot twist a Las Vegas cocktail bar can get away with. On the other side is an Old Hollywood-style hideaway serving movie-themed drinks, some arriving in milk pint glasses. You can also roll a pair of dice and let the bartenders improvise around your fate. Dress for a drink, not a sundae.

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1. 417 Magazine Best Growing Pastry Empire · Best Restaurants in Springfield, MO

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Charlie Menard

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

A former physiotherapist who quit to sell cheesecake to go is, on reflection, a completely rational career move. This Salamanca dessert shop stages its namesake cakes like small sculptures: creamy and soft on a butter cookie base, torched to a deep, Maillard-reaction brown. The shop itself is polished enough that you feel faintly underdressed buying a slice. It is, in the nicest possible way, a single-minded place.

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An ice cream shop that started as a walk-up window at a bar and somehow turned into a proper neighborhood institution in the Drake area. The from-scratch flavors lean hard into Midwestern nostalgia, think bomb pop sorbet and sweet corn with raspberry, which sounds like it shouldn't work until it does. The butter ice cream loaded with fried Twinkie chunks earns its following every state fair season. A second location has since opened in Valley Junction.

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Créeme is an artisan ice cream shop tucked under the big ficus trees on the Plaza del Museo, which in Seville's summer counts as shade-based infrastructure. The flavors rotate constantly, and each one is named for some moment or person from the maker's life, so ordering a scoop feels slightly like reading his diary. Expect a cone, a sidewalk, and a decent dairy-free lineup for anyone skipping the cream.

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Haap is a Korean dessert shop in a quiet Jongno-gu neighborhood where the draw is traditional sweets done with serious restraint. Soft tteok dusted with roasted bean powder, small jujube and white-bean bites, hangwa confections, and drinks like nutty burdock or bright yuja round out a menu that never leans sugary. The baesuk, a warm simmered Asian pear with honey, ginger, and cinnamon, is what people come back for.

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1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Tokyo

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The cocoa perfume hits before the door does. This old-school chocolate shop near the Pantheon has been here since the Savoy court moved from Turin, and it moves at the same unhurried pace. Glass cases hold more than 80 handmade chocolates and bonbons; in autumn, locals come specifically for the marrons glacés, whole or as paste. A small box is a perfectly decent souvenir, though a kilo starts to feel like a personal tradition.

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Murphy's is an ice cream parlor near the Notre Dame campus where the board games are old-school and free to play, which means a family of four can lose an hour to Sorry! before anyone finishes a cone. The scoops run to classics like cookie dough and Fat Elvis, with a few vegan options for the dairy-averse. Some football season nights, a player records a podcast here, so the guy behind you in line may be a linebacker.

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A gelateria where the sugar is dialed down on purpose, letting the actual fruit and cream do the talking. The sleek, minimal shop is the Milan outpost of the Pavé team, and the small-batch philosophy shows in the sourcing: Bronte pistachio, Piedmont hazelnut, fair-trade chocolate. Seasonal experiments like ricotta or white chocolate with lime and salt rotate through, which keeps regulars guessing. Bring cash and a strong opinion about cones versus cups.

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A curry-spiced butterscotch custard pie brought two coworkers together, and now their baking operation has a loyal following that lines up at farmers markets and pop-ups across Des Moines. Pie Bird is a preorder-and-pickup pie shop, with weekly Friday handoffs at a couple of local spots, slinging whole pies, galettes, and hand pies, many finished with intricate pastry work that makes cutting into them feel vaguely rude.

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1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Tokyo

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Tokyo

An ice cream sandwich shop in Carondelet where every flavor is named after a literary villain or witch, which is either the most charming concept you've heard all week or proof that a Yale degree can go anywhere. The owners built the place around equitable food systems, so the ethos runs deeper than the frosting. Come for something cold and cleverly named, leave having thought about regional food economies more than you expected.

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Floral wallpaper and glass cases full of European-style pastries make this small Khan Market cake shop feel like someone's very well-organized fantasy of a Parisian patisserie. The Big Chill's dessert offshoot does cheesecakes, eclairs, and layered sponge cakes with the kind of care that makes afternoon coffee feel like a commitment. The peanut butter and Kahlúa cheesecake has a following that is not casual about it.

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The Stil is an ice cream shop whose name stands for Sweetest Things in Life, which is a lot of pressure to put on a scoop. The flavors run to churro and lavender with berries, and some come spiked with booze. You can build an ice cream sandwich, an affogato, or a beer or wine float, or go for a flight if you can't commit. Dairy-free and vegan options are on hand, so nobody gets left holding a napkin.

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