Darlinghurst Blog: Food: Messina Laboratorio

For a long, long time I have been admiring the Mario Brothers-style mushroom-shaped dessert in the window of Gelato Messsina. 

I would pass by on some boring Tuesday night and see four or five mushroom desserts, with their big red heads and white comic book-type spots, in the big showcase freezer, and I would try and dream up reasons to buy one.

Surely it would make an ideal birthday present. Or perhaps I could buy one to take into work for my colleagues to enjoy. 

But there was always the melt factor. A frozen, gelato dessert would never last the distance.

And then Messina Laboratorio opened up next door.

Messina Laboratorio, or Messina Lab for short, is like the weird Willy Wonka side of the traditional Gelato Messina, where the ice-cream makers go a bit kooky and make big crazy stuff and miniatures of stuff, such as hamburgers (above left) or the strange (usually much bigger) Mario Brothers' mushrooms (below centre).

So when it opened a few months ago, I had my heart set on the mini mushroom - I could eat it on my own; no need for a birthday present or other reason.

I had to have one. 

But then I was on some stupid detox for a while and it seemed revoltingly indulgent to go in and buy the mini mushroom purely for myself. 

Until last night, that is.

Last night, I thought, "stuff it, I deserve the $9.90 mushroom", and so I bought one and carried it home like precious cargo, put it in the freezer and forgot about it for four hours until I got the munchies about 11pm.

That was when I pulled the box out of the freezer . . .

opened it up . . .

photographed the mushroom  . . .

put it on a plate  . . .

and started to eat it.

The mushroom crown is all chocolate gelato with a caramel centre, then there is the vanilla gelato mushroom stem, which grows out of a "moss" of green crackly stuff, which has the same effect in your mouth as Magic Gum, that weird pop-in-your-mouth chewing gum you may have had as a child.

Eating the mushroom, known as "Mini Me", was a bit of a production, and had me interested at every spoonful, unlike the usual bowl of ice cream or gelato in a cone, which still has me excited, just not switched on.

It is not the most dainty thing to eat - especially when you get down to the green moss, crackling base - but I still devoured it pretty quickly.

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Messina Creative Department

Laboratorio and Patisserie

243 Victoria Street

Darlinghurst NSW 2010

02 8354 1223

www.gelatomessina.com

Darlinghurst: Food: Gelato Messina

So it's school holidays time again. How do I know this? Because there are no 3pm weekday queues outside Victoria Street's Gelato Messina. 

There are also no school children, from Darlinghurst Public and SCEGGS, lingering on the footpath of frozen yoghurt specialist Wow Cow, just up the road at 304-308 Victoria Street. 

Ah, I do love school holidays in Darlinghurst, because it also means there are loads of parking spaces as families abandon the neighbourhood for far-off adventures. 

And when I had a rare Monday off work this week, I took advantage of the child-free zone at Gelato Messina, ordered a two scoop cone and grabbed a coveted footpath seat where I scoffed my indulgence and watched the world go by.

But it's not just school children who crowd the tiny shopfront of Gelato Messina. Since opening in 2003, Gelato Messina has become a regular night time stop for adults, who block the footpath outside the shop from about 7pm to 11pm most nights of the week. Gelato Messina even extended their trading hours to 11.30pm on Fridays and Saturdays, to cope with demand.

So why is their gelato so popular? Indeed, why is gelato so popular? I guess it's because it has less fat than ice-cream and while most food low-fat food products don't taste as good as their full-fat counterparts, gelato actually tastes better than ice-cream. Less fat in gelato's case, equals more intense flavour it seems.

Gelato Messina is owned by Jose Cosentino and Nick Palumbo, who are also connected to Omerta (Italian; great place for an al fresco vino), a few doors up the street and A Tavola (also Italian; pasta a specialty), diagonally across the road. Both specialise in food from the Abruzzo region in central Italy, about 80km east of Rome.

It seems the Abruzzians are trying to take over this part of Darlinghurst . . . with a new quasi-addition, which I'll mention in a moment. But back to the gelato:

Yum. 

One scoop = $3.90.

Two scoops = $4.90.

Three scoops = $6.90.

1.5 Litres - hell, yes! = $25.90.

Yum. I had a figgy scoop as well as a scoop of the Banana Caramel gelato made from yoghurt instead of milk:

Yum. Oh, and sorbet!  No milk; even less fat:

Not content with their three shops in a 50m radius of prime Victoria Street strip, the Abruzzians have recently taken over the shop next door to Gelato Messina.

The shop will be used as a Gelato Messina kitchen and they are also planning to host gelato-making classes and demonstrations, starting in about two months time. 

I really don't see the point in learning how to make gelato when Gelato Messina does a fine job of it already. But - no doubt - their classes will attract a certain devoted readership of The Sydney Morning Herald's Tuesday lift-out, Good Living, who love nothing better than dragging their $150 Rolser trolleys around weekend food markets in search of under the counter unpasteurised cheese.

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Gelato Messina

1/241 Victoria Street

Darlinghurst NSW 2010

02 8354 1223

www.gelatomessina.com.au