Raymond Berthillon, founder of Paris ice cream institution, dies

PARIS -- Raymond Berthillon, the founder of the celebrated Paris ice cream parlor that bears his name, has died at age 90.

The company, which closes for the month of August, announced Saturday's death of the patriarch on its website.

With lines of tourists down the street even in Paris' coolest weather, Berthillon's shop has become an institution in the decades since its founding. Its ice cream, listed in many guide books as the best in Paris, first gained fame in 1961 when the food critics Henri Gault and Christian Millau wrote about "this astonishing ice cream shop hidden in a bistro on the Ile Saint-Louis." But Berthillon said the ice cream's first, and most demanding, critics were the schoolchildren of the island, which stands in the Seine river.

-- AP