Sydney · gelato
Gelato Messina
Messina is the origin point of the flavour-rotation, dessert-bar, everything-made-in-house format that other gelato brands now visibly imitate, and the Darlinghurst store is where that format began in 2002, not a later flagship.
What we know
- Founded in Darlinghurst in 2002 when Nick Palumbo moved from Adelaide and opened with 20 basic flavours (SmartCompany, 6 Feb 2014; confirmed independently on gelatomessina.com/pages/story)
- States it never uses pre-made bases or mass-produced flavour pastes; every flavour is made from a unique in-house recipe, and pastry chefs make all 'additions' - brownies, pralines, fudges - from scratch (gelatomessina.com/pages/story)
- Runs its own dairy farm for Jersey milk and imported a custom chocolate-making machine from Italy, installed in Marrickville, to make chocolate from single-origin Ecuadorian cacao (gelatomessina.com/pages/story)
- Head Chef/Owner Donato Toce, quoted on the record: "There's no point putting in a lot of something that's average because you're just going to get average. Put in a lot of something that's really good, you're gonna get great" (gelatomessina.com/pages/story)
- Each store carries a 40-flavour cabinet - 35 traditional flavours plus 5 rotating weekly specials - plus a range of gelato cakes (gelatomessina.com/pages/story)
- Status
- open
- Address
- Shop 1/241 Victoria Street, Darlinghurst NSW 2010
- Maker
- Nick Palumbo, founder; Donato Toce, Head Chef/Owner
- Opened
- 2002
- Website
- gelatomessina.com/
- Last checked
- 2026-08-21
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