La Martinière Le Bois-Plage-en-Ré

Sixty-six flavours from an island workshop

Everything in the Bois-Plage case is made by La Martinière, the Île de Ré glacier that has been turning out handmade ice cream since 1970. Sixty-six flavours run through the range, produced at the family workshop in Sainte-Marie and carried to the shops rather than churned behind each counter. The business is now in its second generation, and the recipes have stayed inside the family.

Gault & Millau named La Martinière among the five best ice cream makers in France in July 2012, and the ranking still describes what the counter does: classic flavours made properly, in volume, on an island that fills up every summer.

A village counter for the island season

The Bois-Plage shop opened on 29 April 2025, in time for the spring and summer rhythm the island runs on. It is a counter rather than a salon de thé: you choose, you pay, and you take the cone or the tub outside. The La Flotte branch is the one set up for sitting down with a tea, while this one is built for the walk between the village square and the beach.

It joins a network that already covers Saint-Martin-de-Ré, La Flotte, Les Portes-en-Ré, the Phare des Baleines and La Manufacture, so the same range turns up across the island. What changes from shop to shop is the setting rather than the ice cream, and in Bois-Plage the setting is a village centre a short walk from the sand.

Beyond the scoop

Ice cream is the anchor, but the frozen range goes well past a cone. Frozen macarons and pâtissier macarons sit alongside frozen pastries and frozen verrines, and those are the ones to think about if you are feeding a table rather than walking and eating. Ice cream sticks are the format for children and for the beach, and they survive the walk better than a cone in August.

Waffles cover the warm end of the list, the obvious pairing for a scoop on a cool island evening. Treat the shop as a specialist glacier rather than a café, since the reason to stop is the frozen case rather than a drinks list, and the range is broad enough to make the choice the hardest part. Ask what is best that week if sixty-six flavours is more than you want to weigh up at the counter.