What's the lowdown?
It's finally happening. At 5pm on Wednesday, March 29, Gelato Messina will launch its first Brisbane gelateria.
The Brisbane store will be the 16th Messina location in Australia, and its second in Queensland – the company's first gelateria opened in Darlinghurst, Sydney, in 2002. It is also the biggest Messina store to date with nine-metre-high ceilings and 200 square metres of floor space.
Messina Brisbane's opening will be welcome news for the students I saw taking selfies outside the shop near Fish Lane when it was still a building site. There are a lot of people very excited for this gelato.
Well, it's all a bit of fun isn't it? Messina's gelati display is piled high like a Marge Simpson hair-do, which isn't the most traditional storage method. (For freshness and consistent texture, gelati should really be stored in "pozzetti" – stainless-steel drums built into the counter with closed lids.) Regardless, there's a Wonka-like delight in seeing all the colours and swirls of Messina's flavour rainbow when you enter the store. And, importantly, it still tastes pretty great.
Brisbane might have landed Australia's most attractive Messina, too. There's a beaut mid-'70s Palm Springs aesthetic via mahogany panels, angular built-in cake cabinets, polished concrete floors and a boatload of browns and burnt orange.
The glass wall looks into the kitchen so you can watch gelato being hand-churned and cakes being assembled. With bench seating, a few bar stools and bean bags scattered around, the space can seat about 15 people. There's also a custom-built classroom for gelato classes.
What's on the menu?
Messina's full range of 40 gelato flavours plus five rotating specials with pun-driven names tabloid editors can only dream of, such as "A salt on the senses" (vanilla and salted caramel gelato with choc-chip and caramel cookies), "Yuzu crazy" (green tea gelato with yuzu curd and mandarin cake) and "There's a pear in there" (burnt caramel and pear gelato with almond cake).
The full range of Messina's frozen cakes will also be available including "Dr Evil's magic mushroom" and a dark chocolate gelato and raspberry sorbet bombe alaska.
Anything else I need to know?
Messina has created the "QUEENSLANDAARRR!!![sic]" to celebrate the opening. The limited edition flavour features ginger gelato with pineapple cake and Bundaberg Rum caramel. It will be available in all Messina stores from Tuesday, March 28 for one week.
Regular hours: Sun-Thu noon-11pm; Fri-Sat noon-11:30pm.
Shop 1, The Melbourne Residencies, 109 Melbourne Street, South Brisbane, gelatomessina.com/au/brisbane
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