Vera Teodori’s sweet tooth formed early. Growing up in Tivoli, a town in central Italy, her dad worked as a beekeeper, and she was always surrounded by jars of honey. At 16 she started working in her family’s gelateria before eventually moving to Rome, clocking time at another gelato shop, where she met Alex Toretto. The two promised to one day open their own, and 10 years on, they’ve done just that, launching Nuvoletta Gelateria on a busy food and shopping strip in Carnegie.

In the intervening years, the couple moved to Melbourne, where Toretto fine-tuned his gelato-making skills at Spring Street Grocer’s chef-favourite gelato shop, Gelateria Primavera and Teodori continued her pastry career at restaurants such as Kisume and Bistro Guillame. At Nuvoletta (which means “little cloud” in Italian), they’re combining their skills on a menu of classic Italian-style gelato, gelato cakes and seasonal desserts with the motto, “gelato is necessary”.

“We are both sweet tooths. We’ve never skipped dessert after a meal; actually, we think that a meal can’t finish without it,” Teodori tells Broadsheet. “Gelato is for us the king of the desserts … both for its price and for the way it is eaten – being a street food, gelato is pop food, and there is no need for a special occasion to have it.”

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Gelato is churned on-site with high-fat Jersey milk, St David Dairy cream, fresh and seasonal fruit and other scratch-made ingredients. Classic Italian flavours like fior di latte and lemon sorbet (made with freshly squeezed lemons) are then scooped from insulated pozzetti tubs.

There are also more complex flavour combinations like basil, honey and walnut (“a kind of sweet variation on pesto,” says Teodori), and That’s Amore ricotta with olive oil and lemon zest. There’s also white chocolate and yuzu; banana milk and dulce de leche; miso and vanilla; and apple crumble made with a swirl of baked apples, crunchy almond crumble and a hint of cinnamon. Fans of Gelateria Primavera will be please to know that Toretto’s popular Sicilian pistachio (made from imported Sicilian paste) makes its return at Nuvoletta Gelateria.

The beautiful shop, designed by local creative studio Ortolan, is coated in cherry-chocolate red manor steel and cream walls to evoke chocolate and vanilla. Terracotta tiles were chosen to represent Italy, as well as the red Australian earth.

The team also makes a scooped affogato served in an ice-cream cup, and there’s a display cabinet full of layered dessert cups such as mango trifle, strawberry shortcake and lemon tart meringue. And you can expect gelato cakes like tiramisu semifreddo very soon.

Nuvoletta Gelateria
82 Koornang Road, Carnegie
No phone

Hours:
Sun to Wed 12pm–9pm
Thurs to Sat 12pm–10pm

nuvolettagelateria.com.au
@nuvolettagelateria