World's Strangest Ice Cream

Lavender Ice Cream, France

Leave it to the French to outclass everybody, even when it comes to an ice cream cone. It’s not unusual here to find flavors evocative of local tastes and aromas, which means a lot of flowers: lavender, rose, jasmine, violets, and poppies. At Fenocchio, a gelateria on the Place Rossetti in Vieux Nice, you can get the floral flavors as well as black olive, rosemary, thyme, and tomato basil.

How It Tastes: Fans find the lavender and rose flavors gentle, even delicate. Ben & Jerry’s “flavor guru” Peter Lind found, when the company tested rose ice cream in Vermont, that Americans were not so impressed. “One guy said, ‘This tastes like my grandmother’s armpit.’”