With decadent flavours such as honeycomb, salted caramel, peanut butter hazelnut, and white chocolate whetting the appetite — alongside your more traditional selection of vanillas and mints — the gelati at Melbourne’s Piccolina Gelateria are not just lip-smackingly tasty, they’re 100% natural too; owner Sandra Foti and the team pureeing fresh fruit and roasting nuts daily to create new flavours, whilst embracing the old by preserving resolute Italian traditions.
Located on Collingwood’s Smith Street, Foti wanted a space reminiscent of southern Italy in its stylish 1950s, and Melbourne design studio Hecker Guthrie were on-hand to create just that. A tiny spot with large design credentials, the studio restored original features including a terrazzo floor, and discovered pre-existing layers of paint, shades of green, cream and brown, which would go-on to make up the foundation of Piccolina’s colour palette.
A long bar overlooks the open kitchen where chefs whip up fresh and authentic gelato using Carpigiani machines, low pendant lighting hangs from the high ceilings, adding a sculptural quality that illuminates the space, and a five-metre pozetti bench — clad in rustic green Italian tiles — is home to 24 silver containers of fresh ice-cream. Along with bold green, white, and red branding, Collingwood’s Piccolina Gelateria is a slice of nostalgic Italiano bursting with slick contemporary edge.
@piccolinagelateria
@heckerguthrie
Interiors photography, Shannon McGrath / food courtesy, Piccolina Gelateria
