Belly Ice Cream

Belly Ice Cream looks like a small-town scoop counter and orders like a chef's tasting bench. Basil and lemon in one cup; Scotch whiskey folded around smoked almonds and salted caramel in the next. Shelley Westgarth, a trained chef, built the Huntsville shop on West Road around composed flavours and a production kitchen, so the board points back to a cook deciding what belongs together rather than a supplier's catalogue of tubs. What lands in the case is dense and deliberate, closer to a kitchen's output than a freezer's.

The range runs from anchors to experiments. Vanilla Bean, Salted Caramel, and Belgian Dark Chocolate hold the familiar end; Muskoka Smores, Muskoka Maple Mocha, and Burnt Honey with candied nuts push toward the composed side. Fruit sorbets — Blackberry Lemon, Cran-Razz — carry the vegan and gluten-free options without treating them as an afterthought, and a seasonal Strawberries and Champagne special turns up when the calendar allows. The inclusions are made in-house: the brownies folded into the Obscene Chocolate Brownie, the marshmallow, caramel, and fudge that recur across the board. Homemade waffle cones, milkshakes, and a banana split round out an order that can stay simple or get ambitious. The online list names the current options, then says plainly that the in-store case changes daily.

The texture is the argument. Belly makes its ice cream low-overrun — around thirty percent air, where commodity brands whip in far more — with sixteen percent butterfat, Ontario cream, cane sugar, and no carrageenan or artificial colours. That specification is a choice about density: less air, more cream, a scoop that eats rich and slow. The West Road scoop shop keeps its commercial kitchen in view, so the brownies and caramel being made are part of what a guest watches while they eat. A scoop shop attached to its own production reads differently than a counter stocked from a truck.

There is a way to order that gets the most out of the board. The Scotch whiskey scoop works as a compass — its savoury-and-candy swing shows how far the flavours will travel from vanilla-and-chocolate comfort. When the case leans rich, Basil and Lemon resets the register, its herb-and-citrus edge making the Obscene Chocolate Brownie or the Salted Caramel feel like a deliberate pick rather than the only lane. Milkshakes and a root-beer float sit there for anyone who would rather drink dessert than spoon it.

The shop began with a practical problem. Westgarth trained as a chef, and after having twins she needed work that fit a family; ice cream, made on her own terms, was the answer. Local reporting traces the name to that same moment — Belly, for the pregnant belly and the children who came with it — which is why the business still reads as personal rather than manufactured. She opened in 2012 and marked a decade behind the case in 2022. What started as a one-person workshop now runs the West Road scoop shop alongside a wider wholesale and retail footprint, though the counter remains the easiest way to understand the place.

For a Huntsville day, Belly works as a destination rather than a filler stop. It folds into a family outing without flattening the adult order — the origin story comes from a parent, the format is casual, and the board still gives grown-ups plenty to be curious about. The Muskoka references, the sorbets for a table that cannot eat dairy, the short-run flavours reserved by email during farmers-market season each give a visitor something specific to carry off once the scoop is gone. Come with a second choice in mind; the board is whatever the kitchen made that morning, and the first one might be gone tomorrow.