There's nothing like a soft serve ice cream to brighten up your day, and if it's dipped in some delicious chocolate dip or covered with sprinkles, that just makes it a perfect day.  

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We recently discovered Chocolats Favoris while in the Quartier de Spectacles in downtown Montreal.  This Quebec City chain of chocolate shops is really growing in popularity, and locations are popping up all over the city and province, and has even opened in BC an Ontario.  The newest location is on the West Island, in Kirkland along the highway 40 service road. 

 

This particular store is located on the outside of Complexe Desjardins, and faces Place des Arts in the Quartier de Spectacles.  It is well placed for all the festivals and attracts both tourists and locals.  It's nicely designed, and delicious chocolate treats, fondues, and gift items line the shelves.   It's a great place for the chocolate-lover in your life.  Word of mouth and the popularity of their products is growing so fast that some of their products are starting to appear in IGA grocery stores.   Their chocolate sauces can usually be found in the fruit section, near the strawberries and blueberries, and make the perfect dessert.

 

All is fine and dandy, but the item that is causing all the frenzy is their soft serve ice cream.  You can't imagine that ice creams can be revolutionized any further, but they managed to do it.

 

In the Quartier de Spectacles location, when you first walk in, you can opt to shop around for items, or get into the queue for their famous ice cream cones.   As you progress to the cash, you have choices to make :

 

SIZE

There are FIVE sizes to choose from (baby, mini, small, medium, and large).  We chose the baby size (because we want to live to see another day !)

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FLAVOR

There are also FIVE flavors of soft serve to choose from (vanilla, chocolate, orange, strawberry, and maple).   We're not that adventurous, so we opted for the regular vanilla and experimented with the dipping chocolate. 

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DIP

Lastly, the important question :  which of the TWELVE flavored chocolate dips will coat your ice cream ?   Flavors range from delicious milk chocolate and dark chocolate, to unique Dulce de Leche, Cookies and Cream, Caramel Fleur de Sel, Hazelnut chocolate, Hazelnut crunch, and Tanzania 75% flavors.  And then there are the very different S'mores dip, Maple dip, Tiramisu dip, and the White chocolate Cotton Candy dip.   We tried the Tanzania 75%, the creamy Dulce de Leche, and the sinful Milk Chocolate.

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Of course, if a regular dipped soft serve is too tame, there is always the extreme line of topped soft serve, called the Eclatés  (ice cream explosions).   These are beautiful structures of dipped ice cream combined with heaps of paired toppings, ranging from caramel popcorn, mini crisp pearls, maple sugar pieces, brownies, Oreos, to candied orange pieces.   They all look amazingly delicious, and truly detrimental to any sort of diet. 

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If you're in the mood for a great treat for yourself, or make brownie points with those you love, this is the place for you.   It'll make you feel like a kid again.   Forget the diet for a while, and have some fun.  Ice cream always makes everything better. 

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