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Andrea Calabrese has been making gelato since he was fifteen, but unofficially since birth. His grandfather opened his first pastry and gelato shop, La Viennese, in Rome in 1957, then moved his business to Vieste, north of Puglia, where Andrea was born.
“When I was born, my family didn’t take me home after the hospital – they took me straight to the gelato shop,” he recalls with a laugh. “My grandfather put me on the bench and I was working.”
That gelato shop would become the blueprint for his own, a tiny corner gelateria in Stirling that bears the same name, which officially opened earlier this month.
Andrea’s sweet apprenticeship hasn’t stopped. After his first stint as a teenager in Vieste, he spent six years working under well-respected maestro Domenico Maggiore. “That’s where I started making my first steps into this beautiful gelato world,” he recounts. Then came London and Oddono’s. Melbourne and Pidapipo. Gelateria Lavezzi. Even St Louis in Adelaide before deciding it was finally time to create something that was his.
“Gelato is my baby. I’m like a protective parent with it. Giving happiness to people is something you can’t buy,” he smiles.
At La Viennese, every flavour is made individually in tiny ten-kilogram batches. Andrea jokes that if he had space for a bed in the shop, he’d sleep there. He weighs ingredients on a microgram scale, he tastes everything, and he’ll tweak each batch until the texture and flavour are exact.
“You have to invest in the best ingredients, then know how to bring them together,” he says. “The fat, the protein, the sweetness, the water – even one gram off can change everything.”
He calls the pursuit bilanciamento, the Italian art of balancing a recipe. “It’s chemistry and physics. The more you know, the more you can move around within those measurements.”
Ingredients are sourced with strict standards, and flavours stay true to the classics. Pistachios come from Sicily. Hazelnuts from Piedmont. Dulce de leche from Argentina. “If I can’t get the best product, I’d rather not make it at all,” he says.
But Andrea proudly champions local too. Pura milk for his silky fior di latte base, cream from Fleurieu Milk Company, and seasonal fruit from nearby growers dictate his sorbetto offerings. “Mother Nature tells me what to make,” he says. “No winter strawberries.”
Andrea recommends trying all the flavours, but pistachio is unsurprisingly the bestseller (and what he calls the “king of gelato”). There’s also a crowd-pleasing baci and vegan, dairy-free, and gluten-free options, so no one misses out. Soon even dogs will get their own scoop. “Everyone deserves this pleasure,” he says.
Coffee from Adelaide’s own 1645 Roasters as well as a small lineup of treats from local stars round out the offering – cannoli from Santopalato, plus triple-Belgian-chocolate brownies and a gluten-free tiramisu from Flourish Patisserie & Events.
“We look for the best quality in everything we do,” Andrea adds. “If someone else can do it better, we let them – because our customers deserve the best.”
La Viennese still retains some of the familiar charm from its previous life as Les Deux – quaint blue timber frontage and paisley tiles – but step inside and the details, and of course the sweet smell of fresh cream and sugar, speak of southern Italy. So too does Andrea’s accent.
“What I’m doing is what I love,” Andrea says. “This gelato is mine. It has my heart in it.”
And now, it also belongs to Stirling.
La Viennese
Where: 1/77 Mount Barker Rd, Stirling
When: Monday to Sunday 8am-8pm
More info @la.viennese
Dining and Cooking