Ghirardelli Ice Cream & Chocolate Shop

Hot fudge is the programme here

The hot fudge is made by hand from Ghirardelli chocolate every day, and everything at this counter is arranged around it. This is a dessert shop rather than a café: sundaes, shakes, hot cocoa and boxed chocolate, with no espresso bar or pastry case to distract from the fudge. The sundae list runs from the World Famous Hot Fudge Sundae through the Chocolate Lover's Hot Fudge Sundae, Gold Rush Caramel Almond, Mint Bliss, Strawberry Passion, Cookie Crumble and the Ocean Beach Sea Salt Caramel. Shakes and cocoa cover the rest, among them the Chocolate Lover's Shake, the Caramel Quake Shake, Nob Hill Chill Frozen Hot Cocoa, Sea Salt Caramel Hot Cocoa and a classic hot cocoa. The name behind all of it goes back to Domingo Ghirardelli, who founded the chocolate company in San Francisco in 1852.

A Gaslamp Quarter dessert stop with a patio

The shop sits in the Gaslamp Quarter, where the surrounding blocks are given over to restaurants, bars and nightlife, and that setting decides what the visit is. Nobody comes here to work quietly. People arrive before or after dinner, on a walk, or as part of a day spent downtown, and a spacious storefront patio takes the overflow, which in San Diego means eating a sundae outside for most of the year.

The store was remodelled and expanded in 2018, so the room holds more people than the format suggests. What you get is part chocolate shop, part ice cream counter and part patio, with the brand's own chocolate doing the decorating as well as the flavouring.

Order the hot fudge first

Start with the World Famous Hot Fudge Sundae, the clearest expression of the shop: ice cream, Ghirardelli chocolate and the fudge made in the store that day. From there the menu branches by flavour rather than by format.

Chocolate orders go to the Chocolate Lover's Hot Fudge Sundae or the Chocolate Lover's Shake. Caramel has more routes than anything else, through the Gold Rush Caramel Almond, Lands End Salted Caramel Brownie, Ocean Beach Sea Salt Caramel, the Sea Salt Caramel Hot Cocoa and the Caramel Quake Shake. For fruit, the Strawberry Passion Hot Fudge Sundae and the Golden Gate Banana Split stay in sundae territory, while the Treasure Island Warm Brownie Sundae and the Cookie Crumble handle the baked side. On the way out the retail wall carries chocolate SQUARES, bars, Pick & Mix, baking chocolate and gift boxes, so the order can end with a bag rather than a spoon.