A trip that had them exploring the food and culture of Tuscany, Venice, Cinqua Terre, Siena and Lake Como saw Nathalie Bercier-Gauthier and Joe Gauthier return home from Italy full to the rim of a “medio” cup of sweet ideas.
The pair own and operate Café sur la Rive, in Plantagenet, and they were eager to introduce another food passion to the area: Nonna’s Gelato.
There is something near-mythical about the ritual: a stroll through a downtown park – if not an Italian piazza – eating gelato on a still-warm summer evening.
The word itself refers to both frozen, in its simplest Italian meaning, and a sweet, cold dessert – but the differences between gelato and ice cream are significant, if not immediately visually noticeable.
Traditionally using milk rather than cream, gelato has no eggs and is churned more slowly than ice cream, a process which introduces significantly less air into the resulting deliciousness, a key factor in the texture and concentration of gelato flavour that develops.
It’s a process – and an iconic food – that Bercier-Gauthier and Gauthier have come to understand quite well over the past four or so years.
The business, built out in an older home that backs onto the South Nation River, asks you to make a choice when you enter: turn to the left and you’re heading to the gelato cooler-case; turn to the right and you’re in the café.
The business model over the last few years has been a complicated one: during the first pandemic lockdown, the café started preparing home-cooked meals for take-away, a response to serving people who didn’t want to cook and couldn’t visit restaurants for sit-in dining.
“Some people don’t like to cook but during Covid they still wanted to have their treats, so we decided to make food and opened the patio when permitted to do so,” Bercier-Gauthier says.
Then, the gelato worked its way into the Café sur la Rive plans in 2021, a year later – but only in a provisional way that was perhaps the metaphoric equivalent of dipping one’s toes into the slow-moving river, only a few metres away, and buying pre-made gelato from an Ottawa-based gelato maker, according to Bercier-Gauthier.
“It was a test, to feel out the market. Will gelato sell in Plantagenet? Will it work before we make an investment given the cost of the machine and so on?”
Clearly it worked.
But soon, Bercier-Gauthier and Gauthier wanted to be better and shifted gears to making their own gelato to satisfy their own tastes and be able to offer a changing menu of flavours and “gelato for different occasions,” she says.
They purchased a Carpigiani gelato machine, and today, depending on the weather, Nonna’s Gelato might sell up to 60 litres of house-made gelato or more on an average week during the summer.
Initial plans to train to become gelato masters at a “gelato university” in Bologna were cancelled by pandemic obstacles and instead they found mentorship in an Ontario-based gelato master.
“He helped us with recipes, and we called him to help with processes when we needed,” Bercier-Gauthier says.
Taking its cue from the matriarchal name, the Nonna’s Gelato menu is a family tree of flavours: nonno Lorenzo’s vanilla, suocera Fleurette’s apple pie and various figli and nopotini flavours from hazelnut to Oreo cookies.
“Every second week or third week, I make a new recipe. This week it was strawberry-rhubarb cheesecake. And it’s all gone,” she says. “There are our basics and classics like cookies-and-cream, which are always there, but then there’s something new like black licorice.”
A pan of blueberry gelato, currently in production, uses fresh fruit from Vergers Villeneuve Farm, about 20 minutes away. Equally delicious was a sampling of hazelnut gelato that I tried.
Nonna’s Gelato is made with organic cane sugar, grape sugar and whole milk, rather than the 35% cream of ice cream; Bercier-Gauthier also brings in special ingredients from Italy.
She points out that a recipe for a five-litre pan of gelato would produce nearly 15 litres of ice cream because of the air whipped into ice cream – and the subsequent flavour would be spread out over those 15 litres rather than the five for gelato.
“What we do is really pure, authentic gelato,” Bercier-Gauthier says of the texture and concentrated flavour.
To enjoy their gelato, customers can descend a set of stairs outside that takes them riverside and to a half-dozen or so tables and chairs with umbrellas.
They may also note a lot of cyclists dropping in – a classic Italian sweet and cycling just seem to go together – because Nonna’s Gelato is part of Ontario by Bike.
“We have parking for all those nice bikes. We might get groups of 20 or 40 cyclists visiting us here in the morning,” Bercier-Gauthier says. “They stop, have a gelato and coffee and head back out to wherever they’re riding to.”
After a sandwich or a wrap from the café, you can also take gelato away in a cooler-sampler pack. There is a plant-based gelato option as well.
Biking or not, riverside or not: it’s all part of sharing the gelato experience in Plantagenet, according to Bercier-Gauthier.
“It’s the flavours but also the textures. It’s creamy and silken with flavour, and it’s almost like you’re eating right into the fruit,” she says. “But when people visit, we want it to be like visiting friends and family. Gelato makes you happy.”
Nonna’s Gelato is open Tuesday to Sunday between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., year-round.
Food writer Andrew Coppolino lives in Rockland. He is the author of “Farm to Table” and co-author of “Cooking with Shakespeare.” Follow him on Instagram @andrewcoppolino.
