Step Inside Dallas’ New Gelato Laboratory

The high-tech lab will supply Botolino Gelato Artigianale’s three Dallas locations.

In an unmarked storefront across the street from Dallas’ Fair Park, animated exchanges in Italian rose over the whir of a large stainless steel ice cream machine. Carlo Gattini, the stoic mastermind behind Botolino Gelato Artigianale, watched as a mixture of mango puree, sucrose and water churned inside. Peering into the machine next to him was the man who taught Gattini much of what he knows about gelato making, Gianpaolo Valli.

Gattini and Valli watched and waited. The machine beeped. They ignored it. A trained eye knows better than a machine when sorbetto is ready.

A month before debuting his third Dallas gelateria on Dec. 16, 2023, in Bishop Arts, Gattini set up a new Fair Park space dedicated to making the creations that fill the freezer cases at his shops. The gelato laboratory, which Gattini said is the official term for such a place, is exactly what it sounds like. There, Gattini and two employees tinker with formulas and trial new flavors between bright fluorescent lights and spotless glossy floors. It’s part Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and part sterile chemistry lab, and it’s the first of its kind in Dallas.

With two generations of gelato makers in his family before him, the gelato business was inevitable for Gattini. He and his family moved from a farm in Tuscany to Dallas when he was 14, and he set his sights on one day bringing artisanal gelato to the city. After studying at the gelato university in Northern Italy, he apprenticed under Valli, a gelato maestro, to hone his technique.

In 2017, Gattini opened his first Botolino shop on Greenville Avenue. In 2020, he opened another at Preston Royal. Now in 2023, with a third shop open and a gelato laboratory up and running, he’s fulfilling his dream for Botolino.

“This facility is bringing us to the final vision,” Gattini said. “I don’t know if there’s another gelato production facility in the country like it.”

Gattini opened the space to support his three gelato shops and upgrade from the tight quarters of the kitchen at his original Greenville Avenue location. He always envisioned having such a space where he could bring to life the flavors he dreams up in his sleep and eventually offer classes on his craft.

To launch the 3,000-square-foot laboratory, Gattini brought Valli in from Bologna, Italy, for guidance. Together they trialed a $100,000 do-it-all machine to make concentrates and bases for Gattini’s gelatos and sorbettos. The Italian Roboqbo contraption can spin together a large batch of dolce de leche or hazelnut spread in 20 minutes, and quickly condense fruit into deeply flavorful reductions and purees.

“It changes everything about what we can do,” Gattini said.

The new equipment will allow Gattini to significantly ramp up production of vegan gelato and sorbetto, which are increasingly in demand, he said. In fact, no dairy-based gelato will be made in his gelato laboratory; that will continue to be made at the Greenville Avenue shop.

Gelato, which is richer and denser than ice cream, is made with cow’s milk and cream, so Gattini uses cashew and soy milk substitutes for his vegan alternatives. Sorbetto, which is made from fruit, sugar and water, is naturally dairy-free.

The new lab also gives Gattini the space to do something he’s always wanted to do at Botolino — make chocolates. As Gattini and Valli monitored the batch of mango sorbetto, Sergio Salinas, who’s worked for Gattini since Botolino’s founding, airbrushed layers of orange cocoa butter into molds and tempered a pool of white chocolate on a granite slab to make passion fruit bonbons, one of four bonbon flavors now for sale at Botolino.

Valli nodded to Gattini, who grabbed a metal canister and placed it under the hatch of the ice cream machine. With the turn of a lever, out flowed a thick, vibrant yellow paste.

“Va bene,” Valli said.

The sorbetto, which looks almost dough-like coming out of the machine, is impressively creamy considering it’s dairy-free. Achieving such texture from a mixture of largely fruit and water is possible through “the knowledge of the best,” Valli noted, pointing to Gattini.

Great gelato and sorbetto also require the mentality that the next batch can always be better, Valli added. He said Gattini, like himself, holds the belief that even the best batches are only an eight on a scale from one to 10. There is forever room for improvement.

Gattini takes his role as an arbiter of authentic Italian gelato seriously. Although he’s developing unconventional flavors like Thai iced tea and Vietnamese coffee and molds gelato into decadent cakes, he’s not trying to reinvent the wheel. He sees his role as simply expanding upon the long tradition laid out before him.

“We’re long past the age of innovation in food,” Gattini said. “If anything, we’re in the age of refinement and improvement.”

With narrowed focus and singular aim, Gattini has made it his mission to make Dallas a destination for gelato that rivals if not surpasses the gelato of his native Italy. His laboratory, he said, brings him one step closer.

“I really ultimately want to mean something to Dallas,” he said. “I want Botolino to be a Dallas institution.”

The newest Botolino gelato shop is open at 269 N. Bishop, Dallas. Botolino’s laboratory, which is not open to the public, is located at 3611 Parry Ave., Dallas. botolino.com.

Source : The Dallas Morning News