Everyone has a favourite Gelato Messina flavour that they can’t wait to get their hands on. Something chocolatey and chunky, perhaps? Birthday cake with sprinkles?

As it turns out, the rich, nutty, verdant green pistachio with crisp praline is Gelato Messina’s most popular scoop ever and it’s not hard to understand why. Founder Nick Palumbo is passionate about quality pistachio, claiming that ‘pistachio’ is the most counterfeited gelati flavour in the world.

To ensure the Messina pistachio gelato is the best that it can be, the paste the gelato giant uses is made with pistachio nuts that have the reddish skin taken off.

The paste is not mass produced as the market for it is too small due to cost. As such, it can only be found in gelato bars around the world that actually process their own nuts. According to Palumbo, he’s confident that there would probably be less than ten gelaterias around the world that do this with a genuine Sicilian pistachio nut and none of them, besides Messina are in Australia.

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By removing the bitter reddish skin from the pistachios, a sweeter and more floral flavour can be extracted from the nuts, resulting in a better, fruitier paste. It also makes for a very vibrant colour.

The paste is then blended and swirled through creamy gelato and studded with whole pistachios and pistachio praline to give crunch and texture, and an extra pop of pistachio.

So loved is the Messina pistachio gelato that Palumbo and his team have even created merch dedicated to that nutty stuff. The line has included pistachio t-shirts, pistachio posters, and pistachio tote bags.

What is gelato and is it different to ice cream?

Gelato and ice cream are very similar but there are a few key differences. Gelato is the Italian word for ice cream and is lower in fat because it contains less cream and more milk. It is also more dense because it is churned slower resulting in less air.

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