First of all, a look from outside:
Inside, generations two and three of truly passionate ice-cream makers, with their ware lovingly displayed:
It all started some fifty years ago (well, 70 if you count when the family started making ice-creams). Here is a picture of yesterdays:
The fifteen vans are long gone, but the passion is very much still here, together with memorabilia from the past.
Here icecream is made every day. Leftovers are just thrown away – a waste, you might argue, but with no freezers to speak of, it might be environmentally friendly after all – and under the very strong assumption that there is any left over.
The business concept couldn’t be simpler: genuine ingredients and a lot of passion. Fullstop.
The list of ingredients is very short: granulated sugar, longlife milk, and carob seed flour (an ancient firming agent – carob is common in Sicily
Most of the space in the lab is taken by the daily supplies of fruit and vegetables. And then you have the vanilla pods, the cocoa, walnuts, pistachio nuts, you name it, they have it. The icecream is made in these three machines every afternoon, ready to start serving from 7pm until 1 in the morning:
The machine on the left is still the one Bepi used. And all three of them use a technology no longer employed, as it is more expensive as it takes longer for icecream to be ready,and there is no automatic spout, but here they assure us the slower process adds to the quality of the finished product - the machine in action is in the video below.
With no added colorings, flavourings, bases nor other tricks, your pistachio ice cream will not have the green emerald colour you are used to:
From left to right and top to bottom: stracciatella (cream and chocolate bits) on pistachio, and almonds on blood orange – terrific. If you wonder about the plastic cup: it was on the boss’ order, ‘you must see what you are eating’. And the flavour is one you have hardly ever found in icecream.
Next time you are in Padova, this is a must!
