Gelato Messina’s new Marrickville flagship and factory is a gelato wonderland. The scale trumps any of the gelateria’s former spaces, the first of which opened in Darlinghurst in 2002. Tables and bench seating wrap around the L-shaped room, next to floor-to-ceiling windows. To the right of the entry is a yet-to-open restaurant, Messina Creative, which will relocate from Darlinghurst and serve a six-course degustation featuring gelato with each course.
Although you can buy the brand’s house-made chocolates (there’s a dedicated chocolate counter), cakes and spreads here, gelato is the clear focus. At the centre of the room sits the red marble gelato counter with glass-topped pozzetti keeping 40 flavours at −10 to −12 degrees Celsius.
“We’ve always got 40 flavours of gelato, 35 signature and five rotating specials,” says marketing manager Dana Newman. “There are [a few thousand] specials in the archives, and often a flavour will come out once or twice a year. Certain specials, people go nuts when they come out.”
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SIGN UPThe choice is overwhelming. Pistachio praline – with generous, lightly salted chunks of candied pistachio stirred through fior di latte gelato – has overtaken salted caramel and white chocolate as the number-one seller. There’s Super Dulce de Leche, which has a more concentrated flavour than regular dulce de leche. It’s so popular it has its own dedicated machine, section and chef to make enough of the fresh Jersey milk caramel.
The flavours are decadent and taste like their base ingredients, with as much made from scratch as possible. For example, choc-mint is made with juiced mint leaves rather than peppermint oil; the pandan and coconut sorbet also uses juiced pandan leaves, processed in-house.
Across the car park from the commercial space is a vast factory the sheer scale of which is emblematic of how far the operation has come since that first, tiny, Darlinghurst gelateria.
Head chef Tom Mitchell shows Broadsheet around the floor. “The gelato section has a pasteuriser that’s a lot like a brewery, with big steel vats and a command centre. That does about 7000 litres a day, and it gets distributed to the shops where it’s churned fresh,” he says. “Fresh is always better.”
In the pastry section, additions for gelati are made, such as the biscuits for cookies and cream or waffle cones for the Cone-ception, a gelato with chunks of cone mixed through. “Some of the additions are baked in-store, and all of them are layered through the churned gelato directly into the pozzetti in the stores,” says Mitchell.
A blast freezer big enough for five trolleys freezes an assortment of cakes, and a dedicated chocolate room is the workspace of skilled chocolatiers.
The most-used ingredient – milk – comes from a herd of almost 500 Jersey cows on Gelato Messina’s own farm in Victoria. The cows produce enough milk for gelato, plus extra to sell by the litre.
The Marrickville headquarters was launched quietly a few weeks ago, but on a Monday afternoon it’s busy: music is pumping and, as is typical in Marrickville, planes fly low overhead.
On May 12 and 13 the gelato maker is partnering with local businesses Baba’s Place and Whole Beast Butchery for a launch party, serving a street food menu with falafel sandwiches, chicken skewers and spit-roasted pork sandwiches, as well as a key lime pie sundae. Live DJs will spin into the evening and rakija cocktails (using Balkan-style fruit brandy) by DNA Distillery will be on the pour.
“We wanted to keep it local, working with businesses in the community – and in Marrickville, we can,” says Newman.
Gelato Messina Marrickville
1 Rich Street, Marrickville
Hours:
Daily midday–late