Sweet Jesus Scarborough
Sweet Jesus, the popular soft serve ice cream parlour famous in Toronto for their jacked-up cones with wild toppings, continues the expansion of their empire with a location in Scarborough Town Centre. It’s located in a sort of miniature dessert food court that also contains a Squish and Love Me Sweet.
They figured if they were going to location in a mall, they’d have to have a badass window display, which is easily recognizable from afar with their signature electric blue neon. The display itself is a two-dimensional mockup of a bizarro Toronto designed by Ben O’Neil, who does all the zany artwork that’s become synonymous with the brand.
The Sweet Jesus component of the mini court is small and hut-like, all outfitted in their signature sky blue. A digital menu continues the theme of the display, a tiny subway zooming by and street lights flickering.
An ice cream fridge is stuffed with pre-packed “pimped out” pints ($11).
It’s a way to take many of their best known soft serve cone combinations home, such as red velvet cake and meringue topped Red Rapture, Bangin’ Brownie, or their chocolatey, peanutty Sweet Baby Jesus made with caramel soft serve.
Cones ($6.85 for a “biggie,” $5.30 for “smallz”) aren’t just drizzled with sauce.
At Sweet Jesus, they’re actually injecting a little of the sauce they pipe vertically up the side of the mountain of soft serve into the ice cream.
The vanilla birthday cake cone gets this treatment with cream cheese icing before being rolled in chunky birthday cake bits. It’s then topped with rainbow sprinkles and a lit birthday candle.
The result is like taking a super sweet bite of classic vanilla cake and creamy ice cream all at once, and definitely brings the childhood party nostalgia.
Milkshakes ($6.85) weren’t always around at Sweet Jesus, but they now give them the same outrageous treatment, serving them with requisite spoons.
Their peanut butter pretzel & Nutella shake with a blended caramel soft serve base has Nutella, peanut butter and caramel drizzles, an overflowing pile of whipped cream, and super salty pretzel bits. The two other flavours on offer during my visit were triple chocolate and red velvet cake batter, though these will rotate seasonally along with other items.
A few small merch items are also available here, like feisty pins and patches ($8) and stark, simple mugs ($10).
The space is shared among all three businesses, and there’s no seating, though it wouldn’t be tough to take the escalator down to food court tables if you didn’t feel comfortable walking around with your drippy fandangled frozen treat.
Jesse Milns