St. Louis House of Fine Ice Cream & Dessert opened the doors of its sixth Australian store in six years on Hyde Park’s bustling King William Road over the weekend.

Originally slated for a February launch, the new store’s opening was highly anticipated, proven by the huge crowd of customers visiting the store’s grand opening on Saturday. They were some of the first to try St. Louis’ new and improved ice cream recipes and certainly weren’t left disappointed!

With its Hyde Park location, the popular dessert bar now has its first two-storey store, featuring bigger tables downstairs for groups of friends and intimate spaces upstairs for cosy evenings. Known for its French inspired desserts and pastries, it’s only appropriate that St. Louis’ new store is also fitted with a bookshelf the length of the Eiffel Tower!

Owners, Vanessa Veiga and Amrit Gurm, were inspired to buy into the franchise after their first visit to Gouger Street’s St. Louis store. Vanessa ordered Archie’s Cookie Crunch (still her favourite to this day!) and Amrit had a simple hot chocolate but the couple were blown away by the quality of the food and service.

“I said ‘Jeez, this is really good but we’ve got to be careful! We keep coming back!’ and Amrit goes ‘Well, I think we should actually get in contact and buy into it!’” says Vanessa.

With Vanessa talking up the Archie’s Cookie Crunch, we knew we had to give it a go and boy, did it live up to expectations. The dessert itself is served in a tall, narrow glass with layers of crumbled shortbread, strawberries, Nutella and ice cream. Each layer is a new sensation with a new texture and flavour to anticipate and it’s the perfect dessert for those who don’t want something too rich. Definitely our favourite too!

Just being in the store, we were able to feel the amazing energy of all the staff and to see how excited they all were for the new adventure!

“We were able to put a wonderful team together that you will all get to know over time. I keep faith and I love my team – I think they’re amazing,” says Vanessa.

St. Louis House of Fine Ice Cream & Dessert Hyde Park is open every day 8am til late.

Words by Geena Ho

WHERE: 185 King William Rd, Hyde Park