GelatoSpots

Research edition

Italy

Bari

The south is where Italian gelato is cheapest and least written about. Is it also where it is best?

Bari is the case that the south is not thinly documented because it is thin — it is thinly documented because the national guides do not look. Gambero Rosso's 2024 Tre Coni named two Puglia gelaterie and neither is in the regional capital; Dissapore's 2026 ranking of Italy's 100 best puts exactly one Bari address on the list, StéFrisk, a laboratory that opened in September 2025 near the university and sources milk, cream, cheese and eggs from named local farms and produce from the Santa Scolastica market a few streets away. Against that thin contemporary layer sits a five-generation family, Gentile, whose 1880 kiosk by the Castello Svevo still stands in the same piazza and was reconfirmed with Gambero Rosso's Due Coni in the 2027 guide. And there is Gasperini, open since 1936, seized from a Bari mafia clan's money launderer in 2012 and reopened under legitimate ownership in 2016 — a business now cited nationally as the model other confiscated gelaterie follow when they reopen. None of that is the loud, listicle-friendly Puglia story (that belongs to Peschici and Tricase); it is a quieter case for a capital that keeps producing new things worth tasting inside a food culture built on granita, spumone and fig and almond season.

Last checked 2026-08-21

The selected spots

2 selected

  1. 01

    StéFrisk

    gelato · Michele Bottalico and Carlo Amantonico, founders and gelato makers, trained at the Gelato Naturale Academy

    The only address inside the city of Bari that either of Dissapore's 2026 gelato rankings (national top 100 and Puglia top 21) names, less than a year after opening, on the strength of a short, named supply chain and flavours built specifically from Puglia ingredients rather than a generic craft-gelato menu.

  2. 02
    The Gentile shopfront at night, warm light spilling from the window onto the pavementFrom Gelateria Gentile

    Gelateria Gentile

    gelato · Chiara Gentile and her children Viviana, Fabio and Francesco; family line runs Michele Gentile (1880) > Francesco > Luigi 'Gigino' > Chiara

    The oldest documented gelato lineage in Bari — five generations in one family, in the same piazza where it began — with an independent 2022 local-press profile and a direct maker quote, plus a national guide recognition reconfirmed as recently as August 2026.

Research notes

City boundary

The comune of Bari. Polignano a Mare, Monopoli and the rest of the province are separate.